Peter Lilly: Poems

Photograph of a vineyard in Les Cévennes, by Silje Lilly. Taken in July 2017. John 15:1-8 Gleaning grapes before October storms, the vines are ancient fingers, deathly-dry and knotted digits. bark-scarred with the wisdom of growing. They are crowned with a branchy vibrancy, of greenery, naivety and fertility. The miracle of the vine and the branches is the fruit. The credulous branches, are trusted to bear the weight of the yield, their green luminescence is continually fed by the vine that looks like deadwood.  A Lamb looking as though it had been slain. I wrote this poem in the Autumn of 2016 while I was in a vineyard on the outskirts of Montpellier, where Silje and I live, in the south of France. We were picking grapes after the harvest and enjoying time reading and writing in the autumn sun.  Silje took the photo in July 2017 while in another vineyard in Les Cévennes, a short drive north. Time and a...

What becomes of us? Circling our ambitions in tentative pigeon steps, not awaiting permission but opportunity, which some take as the same thing. Anticipation takes our breath until we are light-headed, spinning, it repeats and repeats. I wish this circle was a spiral, but I recognise my tracks, our tracks in the flattened grass and compressed dirt. Our internal voices circle our potential like hungry vultures, waiting to pick the bones of what might have been, in the approval of regret. A Poem written as an encouragement for endurance. It's difficult to start new initiatives, to build something sustainable that is in the image of something greater than yourself, to live a Christlike life. Laying foundations feels like walking in circles. But these foundations are important and it is right that it takes time! For, to build without foundations is to build in ignorance, a fatalistic and pointless exercise in egotistical squan...

Abba father May I not be yet, Clay that has been cast and set. But in humble recognition Of my nature fallible, May I remain childlike And in your hands malleable. May I bow before you In broken dependence, Salvaged by your Unreachable transcendence, Which stretched the distance From holiness to degradation To plant inside flesh The seed of salvation: The very will of God, Who chose as his raiment to endure Rejection humiliation and harrowing slaughter, to procure That which humanity Alone could never reach, As the stains of our folly The blood of Jesus did bleach. May I never fall For any idol of allure, But remain in a garment Cleansed and pure. Lord, bid every facet Of my heart to stay in your hands only, With which you forged night and day, And keep me forever pliant As the potter's unfired clay. Mark 10:13-16; 1 John 2:1-16. SPOILER ALE...

I am disappearing, down into the linen that caresses my body as my mind criss-crosses, chasing through meandering crises of nocturnal fabrication. I am full of hope, and dread... and whispers. Soft chalk runs out before the lesson is learnt. I was truant anyway, day dreaming of summer. I am disappearing into something, yet I still see my shuffling footprints, scoring a perforation through this continuum; a seam to tear and a void to feel expanding. Fields of livestock and houses of television faces, all lost in the gap that is left. It is potential hidden in false humility. I am disappearing, if I fight it I sever the umbilical cord that attaches me to my Father. It is an artery, with flow too fast to cauterise. I would disappear in the dirty needles and forgotten-butt fires. Lucid, as I feel my significance hang its head from my skin in shame...