Home of the Steam Highwayman
The slipper hits the flagstones hard
Shatters, glass skids in a star of shards,
A gleam alights one greed-glazed eye
Another winks, and then is dry.
He stutters, sadness, sorry, worry,
Blames himself for hopeful hurry.
But from the dark beneath the stair
She lifts the other of the pair.
The crystal shoe fits on her foot
With apron, drabs and kitchen soot.
Unwounded by words, the body of quiet swells,
Absorbs my breathed-out thought and inwardly tells
Me to ‘Recall that past promise.’ Distance
From what I once said begets a silence.
Now I am stilled by the weight of rest,
My free spirit mentions matters unconfessed
And in clarity born of sore conscience,
See how sorrow always begets a silence.
But with no clamour, remedy speaks next,
That offered hand, to give me when perplexed
A release from the curse of self-reliance
And thankfulness too begets a silence.
Take me into this quiet, where heart touches heart
And my words and my working all fall apart
And I know the true truth of the Spirit’s alliance
And awe, rediscovered, begets a silence.