Hound of Heaven Hymns - Latest works

Notes to eternity ~ a sonnet

‘Tis commonplace for music to be played
As background sound to daily chores and rounds –
The wordless realm part hid, a mindless aid,
To counter dull neurotic task filled grounds.
This topsy turvy truth is rarely proved
By quest for why we’re here and what we’re for.
We wander through this life as if removed
From what is real and lasts for evermore.
My love you are the music of my life,
And still beyond the grave you dance and sing –
Completing, holding, sharing every strife
As mind and soul resound as one to ring
In music’s ecstasy of which we’re part:
All falls away – we’re claimed by love’s true heart!

A sonnet of severance

The stone that skims the water needs such speed
To bounce and hurtle on before the plunge.
I feel like this on days impelled by need –
Detached and hard unlike the grief–filled sponge
Which fills and weighs my heart with my lost love
Who burns and fires my days as ever was.
Yet now both close and far – and way above,
The links are frail, no certain cause – ’because’.
So now I live in two worlds, mine and hers,
And both feel strange – uncharted, depths unknown.
The focused life and light for ever blurs
To open myst’ries lifting earthly stone:
There is a part than can endure apart
Because true love is love that fills the heart

The heart of all matter ~ a sonnet of love

(written on a train and in an Ibis Hotel in London at breakfast)

We’re given sight but blind to nature’s praise,
Our human path is shared and never ours –
As formed in dust we have a song to raise
Though self–possessed and blessed with many powers.
We sing alone estranged from earth and sea,
Like gods we sit on thrones and claim the right
To rule o’er all and take the owner’s key:
Exploiting, laying waste, imposing blight.
A song goes on below our busy noise
As mountains, rivers, birds and beasts sing, too,
Of glory, wonder, awe – creator’s poise
Beyond all meaning, turning why to who.
It’s always time to learn anew our part:
Through prayer where mind is met and changed by heart.

A sonnet of melting worlds

Written on a train to and from my great grandson Max’s
baptism at Farm Street Church in London

The hard edged rocky world of grit and stone
Is washed and formed anew by seas whose strength
Erodes, destroys, yet builds a land regrown
By motions changing earth’s frail height and length.
And time, who eats our days, a plastic realm,
Grants but a glimpse of self and human power.
Its truth beguiling – yet will overwhelm –
For nothing stops the passing of each hour.
We have a melting truth for flesh and blood:
The one in whom we all dissolve and die –
Each fleeting life is borne upon this flood
Into the arms of love to whom we cry.
The end will end beyond my words and dreams
For nothing’s always what it never seems.

A sonnet of unremembered living

Written whilst looking out to sea at Aldeburgh

Is memory all we have in human worth?
Our earthly days are short and soon forgot.
If blessed, we’re whole and free and loved from birth
Whilst knowing, too, the pains in human lot.
We sing and dance our lives in toil and play,
Forgetting cares we share a common path,
With others we find joy and hope each day
And lose ourselves: become another’s half.
Yet time extends beyond each mortal life
And, if forgot, what meaning can remain?
All gain seems loss when struck by reaper’s knife,
The human realm erased by death’s domain.
Creator’s call beyond the endless tracts
Brings home redeemer’s triumph over facts!

the flag and the shell

a sandy beach and that urge
to dig and delve to build a castle
by the sea below dry grains the
tide drenched clay to rise in walls
and mound with turrets and
adorning shells perhaps a flag to
own with pride the achievement
of heart’s joy – all held by ocean
its waters binding these fragmented
rocks so too our lives our worlds
the familiar and the forgotten never
ours or mine remember the inevitable
tide the flood that makes us one

history

all our histories are a
painting and a veil life
is so much more and in
capable of being squeezed
faithfully into patterns
we can control types and
shadows create and signify
meaning for the provisional
but the fleeting powers of
mortality have to be
surrendered some
time yet faith promises the
mystery of reality that the
end is the beginning
the precious canvases
and curtains are hung
adorning and concealing
the truth behind the brush
the cloth the pen history
is art and artifice a walkway
for pilgrims a staircase for
worshippers a chariot for
warriors a hallucinogenic
for self–seekers never for
getting the end is the
beginning

holiness

are holy places and people
the same the burning bush
the incensed flickering the
subdued stasis of hush and
awe the arrowed pang and
moment stopping and scarring
us but it can’t be bottled only
put to rite when the inside
and the outside are one creating
the vacuum where only God
can dwell in unannotated form
this is no clever concept but
a truth that cannot be owned
or exploited the reality that
cannot be dealt with but it
will pursue us because here
is love wholeliness nothingness

gaze away

as the light touches
the retina so our
gaze blesses or curses
order and chance
landscape creature
sea and others what
difference does either
way make or do random
meaningless passing
atoms satisfy the
unknown as well as
every encounter I gaze
over water land and
sky each day a prayer
with the blessing of
refreshment and
remembrance I shared
this view as a lover
deeper than any depth
tender as the waft of
a zephyr and a longing
that is meaning
itself

reflected light

at times the moon
drops low and almost
seems to touch the
earth a light and
presence beyond our
reach beguiling and
luminescent in its own
reflected rays filtered
and shaped by the seas
and craters of dusty
rock it’s always there
even when invisible to
teach us new inner
truths to claim us in
a triumph beyond
eclipse caressing the
soul cross questioning
the mind pulling
and easing the tides
of our sinews in which
celestial light was
reflected in human
flesh unrecognised
by many yet and now
forever here

a rose arisen

bud bloom and
hip petalled and
pared a scent
and descent into
a void where
there is still
promise and memory
of will and was
but which is a
rose and arisen
the burgeoning
foetal flower the
unfolding glory of
display the fecund
globe green then
flaming orb it is
all and none like
me and you in
the cycle of a
rolling wheel
generationally
joined and riven
by the neverness
of being and the
always of the
beyond for the
ever shall be
has also always
been but only
glimpsed as in
a garden

seeing ~ more or less

do I know what I want the
next breath a different prospect
the scattered shattered shards
of sight mean something but
not everything that comes
strangely unbidden untrammelled
unknowable yet claiming us
all in the kiss and the handshake
the embrace and the contracts
that make us one running
out when my clock or yours
stops ticking leaving us
only with more – the inevitability
of the unimaginable – what joy

Beauty's benison ~ a sonnet

Does habit take away our freedom true
If unaccompanied by risk and chance
Which comes from others and their point of view
Ignored so often after fleeting glance?
This life of limits feels like prison’s cage;
It’s more we want with neighbours serving needs,
A world where self is writ on every page –
My eyes are shut to those whose difference bleeds.
Yet life can well anew in any form
Through change that meets us all in certain grave.
Our bumpy fragile lives beset by storm
Are precious notes on love and beauty’s stave.
This hope is ours in life though short or long:
The singer loves us – we’re his endless song!

surface

does the surface
speak true can we
lift meaning truth
and purpose with a
glance and always
move on the surface
reveals so much more
the more it covers
the grain and textures
tales and memories
trapped stored paved
lost abandoned and
spurned it is the
mystery of all that
is and nothing the
ephemeral eternity
there is an economy
where nothing is lost
and nothing is every
thing our time trapped
views are so shuttered
partial incomplete and
dangerous the sirens
luring us on to the rocks
of destruction where
we choose not to know
and be known but
casually saunter through
these precious days
caring only for self and
self–reflection and
immediate self
realisation bobbing on
the surface with a smile
of blasphemous
satisfaction bob on

blind and deaf

energies wild and gentle
lapping waves sighing on
sand the howl through
the trees in the gale we
are caressed and thrashed
by powers we harness but
never control we are not
in charge our tenancy
is tenuous and short
lived but we presume
spread vaunt and preen
when the mirror and the
mystery warn and
disagree but who cares
there’s always tomorrow
– or is there

a baptism of the deeps

for some the summer beckons
lures us to the shore as
wavelets lap or breakers crash
enticing us warm and safe
when beached to walk through
rippling tide gently sloping or
steeply shelving into waters
where our lungs prove short
term organs our forms can
float and swim but only for so
long we’re always out of our
depth yet still clinging to power
independence
i
solation a sunny dip can teach
us truth and dry out truths from
falsehood’s deception and deathly
domination come on in let go

now and never

it all happened where
it was a liturgy in
ordinary far from syn
agogue and temple manger
miracles stories and
cross real time all
time no time every
time our time the im
possible incarnated as
a babe and a dying man
nurtured and nailed the
seasons pass and rhythms
and order make a system
that can never contain
the ever present gift that
blunts our powers so we
can see and taste a
touching whose sensuality
is eternal we are taken
and claimed beyond breath
and sustained by its
pentecostal gale and
anointing fire ig
nited oil so all are
chosen called and
carried through clocks
and calendars to the
kingdom of in
candescent darkness
and blazing glorious
joyful endless
night of nights

inconsolable

it’s non negotiable
but everyone wants
to challenge grief
nobody knows and
yet we all pontificate
over a pain panic
pandemic where the
world has ended the
light is no more there
is no familiarity in
this abandonment no
lifebelt it is the no
thingness of it with
fast dying embers of
the physical furnace
the flames still lick
silently invisibly
intoxicatingly irretrievably
ineffably you will always
be here and yet never
again the public fact and
the interior truth two
are one in flesh but
also inextricably for
an everness no one else
can ever understand why
do I have to be consolable
consoled when the pain
is excruciatingly eternal
in the now and the
prospect alone and to
gether in an impossible
unity – help!

no rhyme nor reason

no life we know has not a heart of finite beats
and into lifespans squeeze we mystery’s ever open door
we make our meaning from the facts we mine and share
and fail to live and dream beyond our powers

if every heart will one day have no pulse
what of the risen Christ with scarred and lancèd wounds
does blood still flow through human heart on heaven’s throne

this dazzling truth transforms our bleak and futile grave
that at the abyss of void and endless end
there is a voice a song a thread that catches love – for it is love itself

from mortal nothing rises truth unknown
all spent and gone eternal’s nought is left
and every energy and hope is held and formed
so stop let go and then we’ll hear its silent call

Easter amalgam

Our lives are split yet held as one in love,
Each day we live a diff’rence strange, apart.
This earth and all it holds – below, above –
Reveals a truth that’s hard for mind not heart:
When light and dark are formed in day and night
Whate’er we will, we cannot always stand.
The sun will set and take away its light
To send us into shadow’s other land.
We each must rest and take our needful sleep
There is no choice for this is nature’s way;
No work or talk: we enter deathlike deep
With only dreams to lead us back to day.
Here Easter’s truth releases us from pris’n –
Our Friday’s God of death is now aris’n!

friday

outside of the city areas
unwalled undefended
often by plenty habit
contentment ease but
countered by the
condemned cells of war
poverty disease tyranny
here in the open but cloaked and
enshrouded by fear prejudice
contempt indifference blood
is spilt judiciously flesh is pierced
technically to shame and
pain beyond words where is
innocence and what
can it mean is sacrifice loss
without benefits is meaning
and its power of love so
absent it might be gone for
ever the lance in the side
no need to break the legs
the sabbath is fast upon us
so back to our temples and
the interior orders of self
and importance the gushing
blood guarantees our job is
done revolt stamped out but look
the flow is watered too a river
of hope embracing all loss death
now has a power transformed
how can I trust it if I can’t see
it

leverage

pulling levers one way or
another is something we
all enjoy exercising power
with a light switch and
entering risk and thrill
on a one armed bandit
being top is the goal and
most have to accept a
nother role but like
the king of the castle
we’re all toppled in the
end and every power is
mutable and muted
making money has no
purpose without the wel
fare of others making music
enfolds us in a mystery on
the edges of time making
love is the cross formed
wave of giving self and
emptying pouring out the
illusory gains of importance
and possession birth gives
us but one lever re
sponding to the call
to lose everything for
the pearl we can never
own the lustrous glory
of every life the smile
of creation and the
darkness from whence
we have come
open your shell

the turning tide

some say the wind
gets up as the tide
turns and turn it
always does pulling
our lives like the shore
into and away from
the restless sea in
turn the slave of
the moon and the
universe our lives are
cut off by the rising
waters an energy that
can carry and contain
set on a journey or
scupper by inundation
the ebb too like the
flood can threaten as
well as bless the waves
and currents caress
careen and crush
taking and leaving
the truth of life
itself yet not just
a quotidian scale
but a tide of decades
and centuries setting
us afloat and adrift
beached and abandoned
riding life and facing
death all in the cycle
of sterile forces holding
us in our infinite
freedom as we soar
in the swirling eddies
of the spirit’s touch
we live and die always
at the same time
whatever the tide

Ascension ~ a sonnet of love's power

The power that lifted love incarnate high
Is ever here in human life and days;
It brought the Christ to us in baby’s cry
And bears the pain on every cross we raise.
Redemption runs through time like annual rings,
The marks we see when mighty trees are felled,
It’s woven through all passing time – and sings
Of glory’s strong and gentle hands – we’re held
From birth through death to love beyond the skies
By him who conquers all that we most fear.
Here’s power that claims and heals that we may rise
With him who shares each agony and tear:
The gravity of earth and death reversed
In heady truth and hope and joy immersed!

The dissembler's sonnet

The sheep and wolf are warnings to us all
As those who pray and prey on those they think
Are rivals and as such are doomed to fall
By gossip, lies and so to envy’s brink.
Betrayer’s kiss speaks surface love and care:
Oh see how much I love you, dearest friend,
But feel the chill of steel – your heart will tear
As you are conquered and your threat must end.
For so it is in every place and age
That treason smiles whilst wielding dagger’s thrust,
Dissembler’s cloak makes cool the seething rage
And covers hatred’s bile, securing trust.
This life reveals that some we trust as true
Are master’s of self’s pride and heartless coup.

the finding

the sudden silence
a stillness that
steals vitality steels
the time the moment
of departing and
something new and
disturbing is born
within the beloved
a quest a question
to find the lost the
slent the still but
never still bound the
living on to make the
daily round a strange
uncharted land im
printed and evacuated
the half heard voice
and triggered memories
déjavued in an ex
plosive moment of
overwhelming power
and ebbing instantly
in an echoless un
repeatable in
accessible yet
returning capriciously
loss and lost tease
as well as tear apart
am I being led acc
ompanied loved I
teeter constantly on
a precipice where my
senses swirl whirl and
spin as everything falls
away in the dizzying
gift of finding and
being
found

Just a thought? ~ a sonnet of retrieval

There comes a thought that stops us in our track,
It will not melt away or have an end:
It haunts and troubles – mind and soul look back
Retrieving, haunting, power which must descend
To change us, challenge and to make us new.
Whate’er the pain, discomfort – cost what may –
We face and learn despite our fear – what’s true
Is changing us as living truth today.
And then the memory from the past is torn,
A dream whose poetry now to prose is turned
And something strange and new is somehow born.
There is no way to backtrack now: we’ve learned
That mystery’s power is more than present’s now,
We’re held and made by hope’s eternal vow.

A year's mind sonnet

This death I face of which I’m most afeared
Has power and transformation unalloyed.
The daily round is strange and dark, oft teared,
As remnant life unfolds now unenjoyed.
When once our time was shared, our lives conjoined,
And brought to life through love – this flesh and blood
On earth no longer meets – our days purloined.
My compass, chart, seem lost in deathly flood.
And yet this day you died is shared with Mark,
His wingèd lion soaring to the skies,
To see the light that penetrates the dark
That all may see a hope with no disguise.
The truth sets free a limitless domain –
For love is all and always will remain.

25 April 2026 ~ The Feast of S. Mark

dance

to many religion seems or feels
like engineering where inevitability
is made possible by formula so
different is the resurrection
found beyond despite repelled
by memory and its powers behind
the curtain the wizard is exposed
as fraud and frail flawed and
failing we look and expect
but fail to see the corrupt and
fading mind the life departed before
or soon after birth the unremembered
the ever forgotten is where we’re
not and so can be in the way we
cannot even imagine yet once
mistaken as a gardener strange and
unknowable to Emmaus then in a room
bolted by fear and barred by despair
the impossible broke our spells and
certainties it is the broken bread that
remembers the other and the
unreachable and pulls us into one orbit
dancing to a tune we never wrote and
can only sing together the fragmented
the lost unknown apart a part – won
– one

hard facts

what currency does
truth trade in or
beauty and love the
world cries out for
hard facts objective
truth these we
might load on to
a card or stuff in
a wallet under
grided by the vaults
of gold but breath
is free and universal
writing a different
story and not a
statement the
heart is the heart
and challenges all
else intelligence
matter and extinction
itself here is the
springboard from
self a bubbling source
bursting into the
luminescent droplets
of a playing fountain
whose purpose is joy
and glory for all the
parts and the facts
matter not when
entranced by the
mystery of being
being alive and
sensing all in
nothing and held
for ever in the
suspended diamonds
of sun kissed spray
infinite everlasting
now!

e.s.p. – without question marks

what is this world without senses
is it a life in the womb or the tomb
where do we live inside or out of our bodies
what can we seek but we don’t
think of the bond of the lover
immeasurable but sung through time
are there buffers at the end of the line
or an airport to take us to the sky
if the end is a beginning
does it also start now as well as then
if I can’t touch you are you still there
why is your touch so real in the ache and the tear
the missed beat of the heart
the arrest that sends me into the heights
all our living is filled with the inexpressible
lying just out of reach because
we’re not yet ready for the ever hereafter

down and out?

you walked down 26
stairs and out of 23
technically so stricken
you were about to die
taken straight into
resuscitation but
never giving up this
was the ebb tide
of mortality but a
triumph of love over
coming months and
years of pain and
recent days of agony
but the greatest un
spoken torture was
the parting the
separation of imm
inent death and
the seeming supp
osed silence and
darkness that swallow
us all at our end
another two days
it was real forceful
tangible love that
sang over the life
support pumps and
the burble and bustle
of a ward your eyes
filled with an imm
ensity that made
this life so small but
every person so
precious and the
end came like a
cadenza leading
into an unending
music a drama
of subsiding energy
and struggle through
a calm a stasis of
waiting and pre
paration for a
triumph of what
we record as the
last note you rose
and stared into
a tomorrow I will
never know until
my
heart
stops
but really
beats for
ever

A Christmas Cantilena

(based on the chiastic structure of Pietru Caxaro's 'Cantilena' c. 1470 in Maltese)

Across the years a song has sung
Formed in our hearts from yearnings deep
For one to come – as hope has sprung –
That love will shepherd us like sheep.
Our searching, fighting, lying tongue
Cries out amidst the tears we weep.

Into our flesh comes the light
Present and clear in our sight
Babe in the straw from the height
Making our human night bright.

Dawn brings the day out of night
Wonder and truth bring love’s right
Challenging power and our might –
No more each other to fight.

As angels, magi, fade away
In passing years the story grows
But still we fail to stop the fray –
We change God’s song to human prose
But now today this love we pray
Our worldly fear and hate depose.

a christmas devotion

a newborn baby
an everyday miracle
but now the Word
made flesh a heart
that will stop a mind
that dissolves within
the nailed and lanced
corpse love incarnate
flesh and death formed
uniquely to take my
hand and yours here
is no lawgiver but a
threshold over time
and every matter
infused with spirit
encountering no
yesterday or
tomorrow but the
abyss we drop
into the vortex of
a new creation
where nothing holds
us tenderly as Mary
enfolds and suckles
her son divinity is
no idea but the
arms of strength
and tenderness that
cannot be seen or
proved just cradled
crucified crowned

nata lux

coming on clouds
is a dense mystery
permeating the
earth for the root
runs deep in human
time and cosmic
promise the mind
and heart ring together
in the music of an
impossible in
destructible hope a
lone voice on the wind
carries eternity in
piercing the armoured
breast of self – love
comes has come is
coming all at the same
time in blood and
flesh placenta and
mother’s arms salvation
is that messy and
real yet its poetic
presence makes me
quiver with the
excitement of never
failing requited joy

A Christmas sonnet of decision

If God indwells with us in every way.
The seraph’s song, the star we all can see,
Here’s yet a mystery set in human clay,
A life – and death – that calls us more to be.
His birth we feast and dance to every year –
Much less his death and new life prize and blaze.
Perhaps the cost and pain of love so clear
Involving risk and faith in this world’s days
Makes every question bring us down to earth
To seek a sure and certain world to grasp
Unchallenged by the starlit stable birth –
Whose life goes on beyond his final gasp:
Each soul must choose the way of life or death
And live eternal truth in every breath.

A kyrielle for peace

Our hearts are battlegrounds within
With minds set firm on self and sin;
Love opens up its treasure store:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

The untold loss, ne’er to be known,
No names in letters set in stone,
Cries out in hope to make us more:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

There is no plan, just simple care,
To honour others and to share
Our lives and world – in love outpour:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

The secret miracle of life:
Forgiveness heals and ends our strife.
It remakes lives, shuts hatred’s door:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

There comes a time when all must choose
The path to walk so none should lose,
That justice, mercy, truth, can soar:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

Sweet peace is that for which we’re made –
Through trust and kindness unafraid.
This earth can touch another shore:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

the capricious tide

our lives are governed physically
by the sun and moon our
moods and days are set by day
and night the tides relentless
pull and push in a distant way
and ultimately take us over
the horizon I watched your
stricken body visited infested
by malignancy take you further
out to sea at every ebb and
then you were gone from my
sight my touch but the gravity
of our passion and the tender
lap of our intimate fusion is un
diminished by the fateful moon
and our mortal nature a different
sea buoys me up the ocean of love
infinite mysterious flowing from
our hearts and embrace the
waters of encounter and be
longing where the be and the
longing combine the torrent of
tempests and the limpid iridescent
droplet all in a cataract a breaker
a crest and a still infinity
mirroring the extraordinary
gift of meaning absorption release
and a detonation of being gathering
us all in the final surge of the
energies drowning us with a watery
immolation of perfection

new year's eve

the dying of the
year is but a
calendar cal
culation of
counting our human
days the scale
shutters our view
as we who are mere
specks in a universe
whose laws and space
we only partially see
yet alone know our
two eyes and brain
calibrate the meaning
of our time but our
souls are apprehended
by a mystery we can
neither scan nor
notate the fleeting
and the passing
open up not into
a new year but a
possibility bestowed
and beckoning from
within and beyond
breaking us like
a wave or a dawn
into a form we
never can see or
know it is the
dissolution of all
limits and mere
existence falls
away as we
are taken con
sumed in a
pointless con
summation

empty

the world is too full
for Christmas Beth
lehem certainly was
and so was sideshowed
to an animal outhouse
humanity majors on no
room creating elites
and outcasts scapegoats
and unwanted little
knowing these are the
conditions for indwelling
divinity it is through the
cracks that love seeps in
often unnoticed but
sometimes crucified
manger wood is not just
splintered and gnarled
it can be nailed and love
can be pierced and bled
and slain that’s why we
forget and fill ourselves
with pleasures and
priorities so we need
never be empty

dogma without debate

truth is like a
hand grenade
weaponised
righteousness by
unrighteous
people and we
pull the pin
with dogma
removing debate
and monopolising
the truth we can
never possess or
control how many
are killed past
and today in a
war to be right
and condemn
difference and
diversity how
different indeed
from the healing
touch the life laid
down the lowest
seat the golgotha
throne the hammered
and lanced corpse
raised by
undogmatic dawn
of grace which
never triumphs
only gives

A sonnet that sings

What story does the music weave this night
When senses stilled by dark and velvet black
Caressed by sound evoking inner sight
And set to run in mystic visions’ track?
A cloak of wonder, worthless to a world
That sets a price on human life and breath,
Descends and settles like a cloth unfurled
To take us to a realm beyond our death.
This journey strange is made and seen in dreams
When rest is active in imagined ways
Our fears are faced from deep remembered streams
Drowned by the cares of pressured urgent days.
This music sings us from our selfish cage
Into the freedom flown from flesh and age.