Poem of the Week | Two Poems By Siobhan MacMahon
Mapping a New Reality
By Siobhan MacMahon
When all the old paths
have been concreted over,
the way forgotten,
when words shape-shift
beneath your feet,
spelling another reality,
when you don’t know
what to pray for anymore,
let alone to whom – then
you must abandon
the broken compasses,
burn the man-made maps
and head for home –
follow the knowing
in your bones, the aching
of your heart,
the song-line of your body.
Holy Dreaming
By Siobhan MacMahaon
There is a new story, you know,
only we haven’t found all the words
yet; she is still telling it through our dreams.
Perhaps we will find a language without any words,
for they talk to me, you know, the trees,
whispering their mossy secrets
buried deep in the soft brown earth,
telling me old tales, glistening webs
spun on bare branches, shivering
in the gloom of the twilight air.
And when I sit upon the quiet shore
and stroke the sun warmed rocks,
sometimes they whisper songs to me,
hidden mysteries of the dark blue sea.
I watch the world unfold
I hear the lonely crying
of the lost souls
come keening down the winds
and I listen to the stories told
by the gurgling of the brazen stream
flowing wildly down the hill
in a rhapsody of ecstasy.
Dirt beneath my fingernails
I dig in the hard earth
of this ancient land,
through bog and bone I dig
scrabbling to remember.
For we have forgotten
the place where prayer
opens softly in the darkness
of our bodies, humming with sweetness,
the place where every cell and fibre of our beings
is ringing out an Angelus
an Alleluia chorus, an Ave Maria.
So let us remember
the deep well of our belonging
the holy mystery of our lives
and let us dream a new world into being.
Let us dream a new world into being.
(Extract from Holy Dreaming, performed at the Left Bank Arts Centre, Leeds 2017)
For more original poetry check out HeadStuff Poetry.
Cover photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash