Paul Finegan

The Heart of a Poem

What is the heart of a Poem?

A place of silence
No matter what the spinning words may tell,
all is gathered to appoint where beginning may unfold
whilst Beauty holds still

I cannot see the poem behind me,
it too is waiting to unfold,
as Love moves across it, and All is brought to view

Soul

Be silent
Be still,
Awakened.
Be the silence
That struggles
To be heard.
Perceive
Acknowledge ,
Be the wisdom.

Love
Be loved
Be silence.
Be this space,
This inner sanctum,
That is
Your soul.

Across the Wide River

Across the wide river
I hear your voice, high on rising air,
soaring upward
on spirals that build to the edge of space itself

where eternity waits,
turning, turning, turning.

Across the wide river
you signal mysteries found in that new country
where the double helix is untangled,
spiralled backwards as matter is unbound, 

complexity reduced to essence.

Across the wide river
your voice has become a bird,
wholly spirit, shrugging off inconvenient flesh
and bringing news of immortality
beyond the web of days which binds us close,
tight as mummies in the sarcophagus. 

Here we are embalmed in illusion
death the waking, life the dreaming:
bodies a skin of fruit
falling to leave that core of Love. 

Flowers held fragile between sheets transparent,
thinner than oiled silk
thinner than leaves of memory
turned in the wind of leaving. 

Across the wide river
I hear your voice,
clearer than the flow of mountain water
over rocks ancient, studied with moss
and potent sign of death unbinding. 

Across the wide river
I hear your voice
rising high to where eternity waits
and whole lives are but a blink of an eye – 

between opening and closing,
a life is begun, lived and ends.

Only Love endures.

Across the wide river
I hear your voice
high
on rising air.