Colin Macduff

My poetic activity in recent years has been characterised by occasional bursts of writing and lengthy periods of remission when I have been involved in getting a poetry-in-hospital project off the ground. With my professional background being in nursing, quite a lot of my poems draw from this source.

Poems

• Nursing in words of one syllable
• Wordsong
• Critic
• Healing

 

NURSING IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE                                  Get                go                                  near           let                                            eyes       then                                                ears     know                                                  reach     to                                                      touch      there                                                hold          be                                         watch                 care                           give Return to top

 

WORDSONG Where do words go when they're said? Most take the air but have no wings no sooner born than fallen dead the ghosts of brief awakenings that snowflake silent to the floor and gravitate to dust once more. But others catch the moment right the earth exhales as they depart a tide of breath runs with their flight behind the lines the listening heart surrenders to the beat of wings the song that from the deep source springs. So we must choose the time for words and know the language of our eyes the sweetest music of the birds is sung into clear morning skies: those wells of light where words are drowned and silence weighs the worth of sound. Return to top

 

CRITIC Should you pull a muscle on your next critique, forking your tongue up the new thing's cheeks how will we know then what we ought to have done, if we're worthy or worthless, if we've lost or we've won? we would soldier on, make our excuses, until you return to eschew in our juices Return to top

 

HEALING I have come to understand, as the seasons grain this skin, when to shield the fragile core, how to tend the light within, as a pilot for the mind when the concrete falls to sand: that the wounded heart can bind I have come to understand. I have come to understand in the marbled morning sky there's the thread of an old moon which the clouds are hanging by, fraying slowly with the breeze, turning shadows on the land: still the sun arcs at its ease I have come to understand. I have come to understand, to the source above the glen where the spirit springing pure vaults the shallow tides of men. What must change may yet endure, like this water through my hand: nurse the healing, grow the cure, I have come to understand. Return to top