Some poems written over the years
Written to encourage a friend Autumn 2017
Painful are the ways you lead me
Desert places filled with bones.
Amid bleached and sculptured rocks
I look for the lost unknowns.
Into wilderness you take me
I only half want to go.
But I need a clearer vision
Finding you it will be so
Where the promise? Where the vision -
Where the staircase up to heaven?
Am I lost and feeling judgement
Along with all the sons of men?
Here you meet me: come I pray
With hope and truth now to fill me.
New direction I’m beginning
Purposely help me to see.
Beloved even while I’m sleeping
Wrapped a while in your embrace
May I now be quick to follow
The gentle leading of your grace!
© Michael John Khan 2017
No Sense Plastic !
2018 in protest at ever increasing food plasticisation
Plastic, plastic, everywhere,
It overtakes our homes!
Plastic, plastic, in our hair
Laughed at by garden gnomes!
Plastic, plastic, with no care!
For all one really knows,
Plastic, plastic - let’s beware! -
Will never de-compose?
Plastic, plastic, everywhere
It fills our bins and seas!
Plastic, plastic, Oh my dear!
Will bring us to our knees.
Plastic, plastic in our food
Even fish contain it!
Plastic, plastic tastes no good
Why do we have to eat it?
Plastic, plastic, everywhere
A crisis we admit!
Plastic, plastic, so un-fair,
What can we do about it?
Eat it, eat it, every day!
Morphing into trolls
Eat it, eat it, every day,
Till we are plastic dolls!
© Michael John Khan 2018
Windswept moors
The sheep stray among
The boulders strewn
Their bleats punctuate
The ever torrent stream.
With grasses blown
And peat log cuts
In rain soaked ground
The landscape rolls
Along Eire’s
Connemara road.
© Mikereflects, 2007
Skull Rock, Jerusalem
Ancient
Quarry face
Beside a Roman road
Skull embossed by
Quirk of form
Portent of an execution
Eternal to time:
Today Adorned in
Bougainvillea red
Blood painted
Guardian of the garden
Where life Arose!
Cc Mikereflects Oct 1996
Vixen
Dusk settles gently with August sun
Sky soft pink on egg shell blue
Bird song reinforced with children’s cries
Colour melts to softer hue.
Silhouettes on yellow skyline drop
As a vixen slinks past silent car
Looking for a meal her nose can see
Hidden in a bin-bag bar.
Cc Mikereflects 1995
Debt of love
Lord
I have a debt
of love to you -
You who put
Your beauty
in my garden
Your fragrance
in my mouth -
My love to share
with all in life
To tell them
you are the one
who brings
Colour from
shades of grey
Cc Mikereflects
My Genesis
Compared to all of life before
As I consider my brief day,
I am but a wave conceived when
Mum with Dad in happy union lay.
The rising falling ocean tide
That man first watched a while ago,
With waters lapping endlessly,
Saw many a species come and go!
But older far by God’s design
Creation’s echo rings her tune
With tireless song as pebbles role
Up and down the everlasting boon.
Cc mikereflects c. 1988/ 2017
The Sea Shell
Scalloped sea shell on the beach
Bereft of life that once owned you
Nature has not finished yet
And she moves on!
Tiny sea shrimps shelter now
Under the hollow of your bowl
Till their door bell rings a chime
And sea roles in!
On the next tide going out
Hi-jacked by a hermit crab
Helter skelter here and there
Your life lives on!
When I found you on the beach
Picked you up and took you home
Should I end your eco role?
Let life go on!
Then I hold you to my ear
I hear the echo sound of sea
Shore where you were found
Your life lives on!
Cc Mikereflects
The Wind-Felled Ashburnham Oak Tree
O mighty oak of God you spoke
When you were green: yet now that you are grey
You continue to, though fallen, split,
But still alive, in deeper mystic way!
For on you I rest my body
With a footstool for my wandering feet.
While you support my weary back
My headrest is your broken branch so sweet!
As I look up into the sky
I contemplate my Saviour’s love so good!
He grew like you, strong and mighty
Pure majestic, gentle in God he stood!
Then yielding to the cross He gave
Eternal life to all who will receive.
My spirit rests from sin set free!
My heart is light - His presence I perceive!
O Mighty Oak as I step out
Upon the road, your strength my strength renews!
Jesus - you take my feet along
Life’s journey now - you guide the way you choose!
Cc. Mikereflects, July 1991
Like glorious sunshine at the break of day,
Emerging through a group of trees,
Soft warm candescence of pure light
Filtering through the leaves,
God’s Holy Spirit shines into my heart
Touching coldness with love divine
Breathing in me the word of God;
His new life into mine
Then behold the majestic setting sun
With colour fills the Western sky:
My heart is filled with praise to God
As even tolls the day.
He’s fed me with his word the morn and led.
His presence I have known and felt.
How good have all his mercies been,
He calls me now to pray.
Cc Mikereflects 2016
