The Whiteness

The warm sun sends shards of light into an ever darkening forest;

One desperate for warmth and ways to see a path,

And find the Way Out.

Into a whiteness which leads us home.

A Sacred Space

What makes you sacred,

Surely not the walls or their shape soaring upwards,

Or the craft in the seamless joins,

Made lovingly by stonemasons from the novel Sarum.

Is it the cold stone, or your warm face,

Which makes you look soft when you are hard,

Or the afterglow of incense, illuminated by the morning sun,

Streaming through the broken window.

No, these are memories, not inner peace.

But they do prompt the imagination,

Which is the door of my soul.

So there is my answer. The monastery Within.

Sitting silently, the darkness of the late afternoon envelopes the day,

Like a gentle cloud shielding the face,

From a crackling sun.

Less dramatic now, the wrinkles add their notes,

Of times well spent, and some less so,

Documented in indelible ink, not to be removed by Botox.

For we cannot conceal our learnings,

Even if we burn the books which taught us,

In the travel which is life.

We can only reflect. That is all.