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Listening

Listening

I see your pain and long to touch the hurt and make it melt away. Yes, I know that I can’t really see the breadth and depth of this dark valley you’re in. I can’t truly know just how sharp the knife is in your soul – for it is you in its path not […]

Grieving

Grieving

She used to love the springtime. Days lengthened, the warmed earth gave life. The sun seems less warm this year. An undercurrent of pain flows through the hours. Surface pleasures serve only as distractions from the hollowness within. Each joy shared other years strikes sharp, and hard as the season wakens dormant thoughts of all […]

The Shelter

The Shelter

You are Peace amid my storms, sheltering arms in which to hide. (x2) Raging fears that crash and roar, hammer on me, bruised and sore; flooding round me, dark and cold – without You, I’ll lose my hold… You are Peace amid my storms, sheltering arms in which to hide. (x2) Weak and weary, still […]

Christmas Gift

Christmas Gift

The gift of Christmas says to us: God Himself now shows the way and we are not forgotten. This Baby, born in a trampled hour came as one Who knows our pain to show us what it means to live, and speak His freedom to our chains. But within our scurried lives we dare to […]

In Pieces

In Pieces

I was in pieces fragmented by repeated loss, each blow hard upon the last. You appeared like fog – an illusion of substance that seeped among my splinters, obscured the far horizon and rocks on the near shore. I lost my landmarks and nearly smashed aground as the fog slipped away.   — Christine Rigden

Lost Days

Lost Days

As years pass and days shrink, activity multiplies. Each season sifts its own joys and rhythms yet moments to pray elude. A rare space opens, frays and fragments and hours are lost before I’ve noticed what might have been. Winter – life slows down and time pulls long evenings round its shoulders, draws up the […]

A Place Like Bedworth

A Place Like Bedworth

Classy like frayed trainers in unrelenting January drizzle, All Saints Square is slick; dead leaves lie limp in corners. Conifers drape the waterfall amid stone shelves and naked acers, the curve of alms-houses stately through the lattice of branches. The sky is a drab veil behind the listless winter market. Stall-holders huddle mugs over cabbages […]

I’m Alright Jack

I’m Alright Jack

Why should I change my routine, the life that I enjoy? Why should I share a lift to work, or skip Algarve this year? I want summer clothes in winter, my gadgets on all night. If I want green beans in April, who are you to point? The children must have lots of toys, it’s […]

Poems

Poems

Poetry being what it is, the poems I write may have more than one layer of meaning, and may be about me or about people I have listened to or invented. Like most people I did some writing at school, but got most interested again in my 20s when I started journaling and also using poems […]