Poem of the Week
Image: 'Rainy Windscreen: McGrath Highway' by Gregory Thielker (b.1979)
WINDSCREENS
by TMR Jackson
Dr Tim Jackson is a retired specialist in public health medicine, living in Cork. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.
There's a crack on my windscreen,
That creeps slowly across
Its clear transparency -
Vertical at first,
Then angling horizontally
Into my field of vision.
I tell myself it is safe,
Laminated, tough -
A glass sandwich,
Containing plastic.
So resistant to trauma,
It can restrain heads
Hurled against it
In violent accident.
But that doesn't stop the creeping,
That millimetres its weekly way,
Weakening the structure, glittering
In deadly procession to the day
Of replacement or ultimate fracture.
There are cracks in my being,
Just as disruptive,
Etching their lines into my life,
Crazing the crystalline glory
Of God's infinity,
Refracting His light
Into a kaleidoscope of conflicts.
He still shines round the crazy soul,
Filtering through the interlocking mesh
Of sins hackneyed
By exposure and practise.
Yet....It goes deeper than that,
Beyond behaviour, into motivation,
Into the fractured shadowy
Structures of the psyche,
Where the energies hum
And weave the patterns of karma.
That's where the arena is.
Yet few struggle at this level,
Where space and time dissolve
To make companions,
Intellects scattered over Centuries,
Whose perennial Philosophy
Leads them questing,
Unsatisfied,
To face the existential
Stresses at life's core.
Buddha showed the danger of desire
And attachment to the transient;
Plato the illusory physical scene,
Dancing on the screen of the senses,
Shadowy reflections
In the glare of the greater reality
Beyond the cave of the world.
Christ lived the primacy of love
And nailed himself in service
To all suffering humanity -
Though few serve with Him.
There are yet some,
Who discover with Him,
The calm in the eye
Of the storm,
And learn to spin with it,
Harnessing the roaring chaos
To an intensity of living
That lifts them clear
Of the detailed peering of the soul
Through blurred windows
Of ideology, fear, and craving,
To where windscreens
Are unnecessary,
And are blown away completely
In the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
WINDSCREENS
by TMR Jackson
Dr Tim Jackson is a retired specialist in public health medicine, living in Cork. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.
There's a crack on my windscreen,
That creeps slowly across
Its clear transparency -
Vertical at first,
Then angling horizontally
Into my field of vision.
I tell myself it is safe,
Laminated, tough -
A glass sandwich,
Containing plastic.
So resistant to trauma,
It can restrain heads
Hurled against it
In violent accident.
But that doesn't stop the creeping,
That millimetres its weekly way,
Weakening the structure, glittering
In deadly procession to the day
Of replacement or ultimate fracture.
There are cracks in my being,
Just as disruptive,
Etching their lines into my life,
Crazing the crystalline glory
Of God's infinity,
Refracting His light
Into a kaleidoscope of conflicts.
He still shines round the crazy soul,
Filtering through the interlocking mesh
Of sins hackneyed
By exposure and practise.
Yet....It goes deeper than that,
Beyond behaviour, into motivation,
Into the fractured shadowy
Structures of the psyche,
Where the energies hum
And weave the patterns of karma.
That's where the arena is.
Yet few struggle at this level,
Where space and time dissolve
To make companions,
Intellects scattered over Centuries,
Whose perennial Philosophy
Leads them questing,
Unsatisfied,
To face the existential
Stresses at life's core.
Buddha showed the danger of desire
And attachment to the transient;
Plato the illusory physical scene,
Dancing on the screen of the senses,
Shadowy reflections
In the glare of the greater reality
Beyond the cave of the world.
Christ lived the primacy of love
And nailed himself in service
To all suffering humanity -
Though few serve with Him.
There are yet some,
Who discover with Him,
The calm in the eye
Of the storm,
And learn to spin with it,
Harnessing the roaring chaos
To an intensity of living
That lifts them clear
Of the detailed peering of the soul
Through blurred windows
Of ideology, fear, and craving,
To where windscreens
Are unnecessary,
And are blown away completely
In the glorious liberty of the sons of God.