Riddle 1

We sowed peace and got war
We sowed olive trees and got thorns.
So who is to blame,
The sower,
The seed
Or the field?

Moonlit Christ looks quizzically

Down on a thousand eager artists

Tying His arms and legs

To easels loaded

With the dirty teeth of

Fame and desire.

The goat thuds into

His chest and the vulture

Unscrews His bones.

Cold lonely on an empty hillside

He is a figure just out of sight

As a woman hurries home

With her shopping

Worrying about the change,

When the lights go out

And she curses, looking for her keys.

Shadows

Take a pencil to draw,
And you realise
We are mostly made of shadow.
We are revealed by what we are not;
By shadows and doubt,
By hiding and illusion.
Perhaps this is why
God’s light is both alarming
And healing,
Painful and a balm.
It destroys
How we see ourselves
How we are shown,
Then reaches through shadow
To the heart.