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Paul Willason Poem
At day's end, I take in the last light
seeping into the dark waters
across the bay and keep it here.
I gather the sound of departing gulls
smudged on the sky, the quietening
settle of birds in the cypress trees
along the foreshore, the giggle
of a child high on a swing
being pushed by a mothers hand.
I hold here the gentle sweep
of waves soaking into wet sand,
the slow roll of seaweed, bubbles
bursting around shells, wings
low over the water.
I draw in the evening and keep
it close with its lights
sprinkled around the edges
of the headland,
emerging stars hung soundless
in the heavens, the blinking
passage of a southbound airplane
heading into a long night.
From somewhere, the smell
of honeysuckle spilling
into the waiting air.
I make my way home, filled
with all that I have taken in,
almost happy having little space
left over to fit myself.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
If I wasn't there,
the rain swollen clouds
would have still dumped
their dark weight over the bay
and through a gaping tear,
let down a curtain of sunlight
to start the day.
And if I wasn't there,
the old, arthritic labrador
would have still waddled
along the street
with its bent but steady gait,
undistracted, self absorbed
and fixed in its own stare
that allowed no deviation
from years of devoted plod.
The morning had no need
for me, what happened
would have happened anyway.
There's an annoying sadness
in knowing the earth
doesn't seem to care
if things pass unnoticed.
Sunsets and waterfalls
carry no favor.
To it, the achingly beautiful
and the catastrophic can
happily go unreported.
And yet I still ask -
what's the point -
and entertain the notion
that the universe has this
innate and unfathomable need
for a witness
to take in Creations
unfolding riddle
and make it fit together.
I could be wrong,
but for each of us,
the privilege of being here
on this gifted earth,
to understand, care for
and tell its story in song
fulfills a purpose,
if only to this end -
or something more.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
I gather in the scarred
and broken forms,
the lipped imperfections
that score the wind
to give voice to an evening.
I see through the lesions
that open to a stillness
into which the universe
whispers its unfolding.
I feel the awe,
the sheer enormity
that confronts the senses
as all that is
opens into endlessness,
the mind wilting
at its door,
leaving only these hands
to shape offerings which,
like shells held to an ear,
echo only the faint murmurs
of what cannot
be contained.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
Crowned poet,
posthumous Queen
of the private world,
you explored
every subtlety of the soul
and mapped the wonder
of existence
to its last drawn breath.
What price did you pay
deep in your alabaster chambers,
charting the course
of a nameless presence
stretched across eternity,
giving it a home
in the exquisite vessel
of your words.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
I watched it emerge
from out of the fog, monumental
in size, a sheer cliff face of steel
moving pass me, almost
quieter than my breath
but for a whispered wake
running from its bow.
Something this big
should have made
more noise.
A black hull bore scars
of scrapings and rust bleeding out
of fissures along its length.
The fog seemed to oil its way,
its shape looming large
then slowly growing smaller
as it slid down river until
it dimmed and disappeared.
In that moment its passage
was a mystery, a brief apparition
of something beyond the dimension
of ordinary things. The quiet
of its passing, the dark bulk
and beauty of its presence
was magnificent
and overpowering.
It was like a shadow cast
by a mythical beast
coalescing out of history,
infiltrating the mind then
dissolving once more
into a place somewhere
hidden in its magical past,
suddenly brought back
to this world
with its registered port
written in rusty lettering
on its stern - MONROVIA
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
They would ripen all at once
under a hot sun and hang
in a sugary glut only for a day
or two before starting to spoil.
I had to be quick and when
the time came,
I hurried home
from school to clamber up
the tree and seize
the fruit. Each was a warm,
engorged globe of flesh
with just a hint of give
when a finger was pressed
into skin.
No command,
not even from God,
could have held back a bite.
Mouthfuls of sweet peach
sent every pleasure bud
on the tongue into a spasm
and spilt the overload
oozing out of the corners
of stretched lips.
Great gulps
were hurried down the throat
to make room for another bite.
No savoring restraint held
me back, this was volume.
All afternoon
my face and hands
dripped a sticky syrup,
coating my shirt.
Finally I would have my fill
and sit bloated beneath
the tree surrounded
by peachstones some still
encased in leftovers
of pinkish flesh. Sorry evidence
to convict. Afterwards,
a terrible remorse always
took hold. Next day
I thought my stomach ache
was punishment from above.
Every year of my childhood,
in the heat of late summer,
I repeated the same sin,
suffered the same consequence,
hoped for forgiveness
from a wrathful God.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2024
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Paul Willason Poem
There is always
a dull longing
that goes unlabelled
and hangs a layer or two
below a joy, a pang
somewhere in the soul
that can't be coughed up
or cut out, just endured.
A nonsense to the skeptic,
no more than perhaps
a twitch of an evolutionary
relic left unemployed within
the brain, now ossified
into an irritant jumping
across the boundaries
of our troubled sleep.
Whatever its origin,
it's always there
be it a hollow left in our psyche
from an umbilical when severed
by God or a buffering problem
in our brain,
the longing never leaves.
We try and quench it
with beauty, love, art
and myth but it remains
unfulfilled, as if a speck
of the infinite resides within
us all, that can absorb
everything we have
and then ask for more.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
Looking out of a window
onto the world, you wonder
if there is an awareness
that soaks each living cell,
something that sews together
all life into a symphony
playing to the score written
by a single entity.
Or is everything a random
throw, discrete forms let loose
within a mindless programme
loaded with a bias
to survive, a world where
even charity and love
are attributes selected
to give the species
a social advantage, a trick
to win the game.
What then art, a sublime
song sung by the human
soul or something made
in the workshop
of a brain to keep
the human species entertained,
nothing more
than an evolutionary pill
to save us from going insane
whilst welded to our purpose.
Yet so much seems superfluous
to the mere act of breeding,
that we create books, galleries
and concert halls to store,
the evidence we could be more.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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Paul Willason Poem
Just past
where the world of the atom ends
there are spaces that we try to fill
or pretend they don't exist.
Hollows that harbor silence
or an unshaped need,
the imprint of something
the mind can't conceive.
Music makes its way there
and knocks on the door,
takes its seat to hear
the sublime and capture
in glorious notes
what can't be said
in words. The chords
of creation sound
in the chambers of the ear.
Poetry goes there
with its clumsy feet, trying
to fit the formless into a cage,
give beauty a face,
fumbling to shape shadows
into three dimensional space.
And yet it is the word
that brings things into being,
gives each its sacred name.
Language the blunt instrument
of the poet's art,
the poem a sanctum
to house the holy embers
of creations spark.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2024
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Paul Willason Poem
I have a light within
that I've somehow curtained,
put something in its way.
I cast a shadow across
everything. It is no defect
of the eye but of the spirit,
a flaw I have in me,
a dimming I pass on to settle
the scene and rob color
of its intensity.
I've gotten used
to the dull glaze I bring
that now it appears
the natural state of things.
Even water speared
by the sun bleeds a muted sheen,
no bright splinters of light
ricochet off to be caught
by eyes having to hide
behind a squint, I can take
my reflections straight.
There are moments
when I can feel a tightening
and something within me
stretch and tear the stitching
on a seam. Light pours out
and affixes a patch of life
in a blinding beam, too bright
to hold or keep except
for the afterglow it leaves
on a page or lingering
for awhile on the horizons
of a dream.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2023
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