Well, some things just have to be done...

 Happy Gaudete Sunday all

Blackbird in Fulham

by P J Cavanagh

A John the Baptist bird which comes before
The light, chooses an aerial
Toothed like a garden rake, puts a prong at each shoulder,
Opens its beak and becomes a thurifer
Blessing dark above dank holes between the houses,
Sleek patios or rag-and-weed-choked messes.

Too aboriginal to notice these,
Its concentration is on resonance
Which excavates in sleepers memories
Long overgrown or expensively paved-over,
Of innocence unmawkish, love robust.
Its sole belief, that light will come at last.
The point is proved and, casual, it flies elsewhere
To sing more distantly, as though its tune
Is left behind imprinted on the air,
Still legible, though this the second carbon.
And puzzled wakers lie and listen hard
To something moving in their minds' backyard.

Darkness

after Rilke

by Alan Payne

Darkness,

your grand circle engulfs

all the small bright circles

of the world.  None

can withstand you:

meteors trailing their light

through space, this slim

candle on a shelf.

All selves

belong to you, began

in you.  You place

a hand on my shoulder, shift

hand to wrist, fell my pulse.

Your gentleness moves

me to belief: in

darkness.

Queen of all she surveys - Holly testing out the smart new dining chairs tucked under the lovely new dining table, and giving her seal of approval.

Yesterday I joined some friends at a charity carols by candlelight event in Edinburgh - and in the lucky-dip managed to win no less than a television!  Just need to arrange to collect it from the charity's offices in town as I'd left before they contacted me with the news, but, wow!

Feeling very blessed.

The Tyger

by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?