Tha Anchor

By John Butterfield

My life depends on ironwork, anvil forged

in nocturnal sea loch swell.

Wind: gale force eight.

The tempest howls; the rigging rings.

Sea state: rough.

The yacht rocks with violent swings

Visibility: poor.

Low cloud; the rain lashes; splashes.

Outlook: deteriorating

All is wild, disturbed and crashes

Far beneath angry black the barb bites

sludge, slime, weed and shale.

In my bunk, cosy, comfortable

sleep amid the ferocious gale.

Trusting the strength of every link

and the weight embedded deep below.

Today

Today
by John Butterfield



Between hope and despair is a nowhere place

where it is too soon for weeping

and too late for partying

and all is unsettled, uncertain, unclear.

And in this empty place

this place of waiting

there is, most strangely, a peace

a deep, deep, peace

that comes from the deep faith

that beyond all human understanding

somewhere amidst the uncertainty

God is at work.

And we, protected from the vast void of nothing

which is the possibilities of futures unborn,

we live and love and watch the flowers grow

in the unsentimental reality

that is the present moment.

Creed

by John Butterfield






I believe in God
the father almighty
most of the time
but sometimes
I wonder
what life would be like
if I didn't.

If there was no moral origin to the universe.
If there were no origin in love
and no destination in love
just a rabid struggle for supremacy
without rules
in the short years of life.

If we lived and accumulated
and bonked and fought
and hid and cried
knowing that nothing meant anything
and all was ephemeral floss.

If the big brother house
were the model for life
and the animal instincts
we have mostly civilised
became rampart serpents
in the evolutionary struggle
of not so sociable
social Darwinianism.

As we trudge onward
on our return journey
to the primal slime....

I'd prefer to believe in God!


(The image accompanying this entry is one of the series of engravings by William Blake illustrating the story of Job)