The Hollow Planet

If all language deserts me
All vice of verb and adjective
Then pardon my Divine feeling
That shall remain, in my silence
Like the voice of the forest

Before the logging trucks came
Like the sound of the ocean
Before the harbour and ship-horns
If the voice of a planet suffers
Who will hear her lost password?

Who will know the centuries
How many springs and summers yet
Till those virgin fields come back again?
While men and women breed
The world which has offered so much

Prosperity to them, suffers still
Their economy a scaffolding of allure
And the disconnection with nature
The urgency is for the physical basis
Which humanity has lost touch with

Evolution labored to drive us into cities
Green cities are the orgasms of the Earth
The hide and seek of skyscraper gardens
Wrapping towers of glass with gushing water
Will the…

Painting by Max Jensen

Only the blackest of silk will do
To wrap my sorrow in,
To line a wooden casket,
So none of it escapes.
I set it in the water,
Balanced on a wave tip,
Tide enfolds it in compassion,
Guides it gently over rock and reef.
I watch the box of sadness,
Slip into the darkness
That fills the sleeping world,
Beyond the wave-nipped horizon.
When the long watches of the night
Are over and the light of day returns,
The ink-dark sea is empty,
But the sky is all aflutter
With white gull wings,
Colour of morning, sea foam splendid,
Bearing hope out of the east.