Category: Poetry

The Middle Years

My wife and I got married 15 years ago this week. Shortly after, I wrote a short poem for my new bride:

Are there seasons to love, new months and years bring?
If seasons there are, our love is the Spring
A sapling still budding, fresh fruit on the vine
With roots planted deep in the well of Divine

Must needs there be Winter? I haven’t a clue
My prayer is to always be growing the New
But seasons can come, and seasons can go
Our love will remain, it will always be so

Though slowly, yet surely, this oak of the Lord
Will grow up precisely as it has been told
Till stands in God’s garden a tree strong and true
That brings Him a smile as He’s passing through

I suppose it’s natural when you begin something to think of the ending. But there’s something else I didn’t think of so much back then, something we’re living a lot of right now. It’s something you might call “the middle”, or in the words of the poem, that “slowly, yet surely” bit. Saplings may be full of exciting potential, and mature oaks of awe-inspiring strength, but it’s the transformation from one to the other that accounts for the majority of the life of the tree. And our marriage.

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For Hannah Grace

This week twelve years ago, we should have been welcoming our firstborn child, but she wasn’t here. I’ve written about the day we found out about Hannah’s death in this post. This week, in honour of the daughter we haven’t met (yet), I’m sharing a poem I wrote shortly afterwards to process my thoughts about God and the death of a child.

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Good Friday (A Poem For Christmas)

I do realise that Good Friday is actually a separate holiday from Christmas. But I also realise that if it hadn’t been for Good Friday, we’d have no reason to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Christmas is about how the same God we all tried to push away came down and invaded our world anyway, come to rescue us from the broken reality we created, come to give us life at the cost of his own. Even at Christmas, the shadow of the cross hangs over the manger, and the glory of Easter resurrection is just around the bend! So this Christmas, I submit to you that a poem about Good Friday is not out of season:

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The Song Of Streams

Now everybody’s looking up, the sky is in their dreams,
All climbing ladders, stairs and walls – a little more, it seems,
And we will satisfy our thirst among the mountain streams

But mountain streams flow opposite to all we think we know
Their joy is not to climb the heights – they hurry to be low
Through rocks and mud and tangled roots, and laughing as they go

Their Maker, pleased to do the same, came down from dizzy height
To deepest valley far below to save us in our plight
To lift us up, the King went down, and it was His delight!

Oh, let me learn the song of streams, that joyful, laughing sound,
The pathway of my Maker on a ladder upside-down,
And so to lift up others – wherever they are found

The Coals

If you want to take a picture of a big impressive fire
If you want to post it up online and likes are your desire
Be sure to take your photo when the fire’s just been lit
When flames are leaping up so high it’s sure to be a hit
But then, if warming up your hands or cooking are your goals
You’ll have to wait and let the fire burn down to its coals
For epic Insta-pictures and 1,000 Facebook likes
Won’t be enough to warm you up on dark and stormy nights
Sometimes the unimpressive things are better than the show
Sometimes the things you wait for are the best things you can know

Of Death & Life

After attending the funeral of an extended family member this week, I was once again reminded of the short span of my own life. The funeral was more than a recognition of the reality of death, though, and more than a celebration of a life well lived: it was also a celebration of a sure hope beyond the grave. As the apostle Paul said: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I found a little graveyard
The grass grown up so high
On beds of now-forgotten folk
Whose names are scrubbed by Time
A few more days
A few more breaths
And I will join them here
And grass will grow
And time erase –
My name will disappear
But if your grandkids find me there
There’s no need for dismay
My Saviour broke the power of death
And I’ll be Home to stay