My most recent poem was written to follow the theme of last year’s National Poetry Day.

TRUTH

Truth I touch, smell, see myself,
It’s not the words of someone else;
So if I trust from being told,
That is not truth; that’s faith I hold.

Yet sometimes when I look I find
That what I see is my own mind;
So where is truth if my own eyes
Are not immune from my own lies?

Truth is hopes and truth is fears,
Not always as it first appears,
Not always as you might expect,
But always worthy of respect.

There’s honest joy and honest grief,
There’s knowledge and there’s blind belief.
And when we worship what is true
Is that just someone’s point of view?

It saves, it kills, it lives and sleeps,
Truth’s blossom grows, it sows and reaps,
And truth is noble, truth is just,
And yet can turn belief to dust.

And if the choice should come that I
Might lose all faith, or let truth lie,
Would grabbing truth and honesty
Be worth my loss of trust in me?

Truth is doubt; doubt’s grip is tight
Around the things you thought were right;
It clings like ivy, creeps like rot,
‘Til what your heart felt true is not.

Truth pours like a river, trickles like a stream,
It is a nightmare, it is a dream;
Truth stands alone, is not my will,
It shouts, it hides, it is not still.

Is truth a fact without dispute,
Or faith unproved but resolute?
So like a path in fresh-laid snow
Truth is truly hard to know.

THE COUNTRY LANE

It winds and it wiggles, the old country road,
It rises and falls as it carries its load,
And its load is not now what it bore in the past
When its load was of horses, of wagons, of carts,
When its surface was rutted and puddled and stony,
And pounded by livestock, by foot and by pony.

The country road dives into dips lined with leaves
Where the trees arch their branches like shaggy green sleeves,
Where shadows are clingy, where breezes are damp
And rustles and ripples enliven the bank,
Where the bushes and bracken might almost have eyes,
Regarding time pass as we pass in our lives.
The poor without shoes have stepped sorely this way,
And the rich in plush carriages rumbled by day,
Whilst by night, have true sweethearts skipped blithe through the shimmer,
And by dawn birds have greeted the sun’s reborn glimmer.

Then the country road rises as notes in a scale,
Pausing proud on a hill, catching breeze like a sail,
With the view of a castle, the strength of a rock,
Ever watching the pheasants, the crops and the flock;
But it’s bitter up here when the North gusts are shrill,
Folks are glad of more shelter by the stream down the hill.

While the world has leapt forward the road has remained,
Sitting still in the landscape as it’s snowed and it’s rained,
Through the dust and the drizzle, through the heat and the cold
This route has seen many grow up and grow old,
And itself become wounded, seen itself all but gone,
But is always reborn like the trees in spring sun;
So it winds and it wiggles, remaining but going,
Immortal, essential, unnoticed and knowing.