Rats At Sea

National Poetry Day 2017

You - Spoken by Jude Murray

Finding The Join

If
You can't,
You won't.

But if
you are curious
about what happens
between
twenty-three-sixty
and
treble-oh-oh,

or
what goes into
the crack separating
the last of May
from
the first of June,

then
you are in for
a lifetime of
sideroads and
alleyways
and strange people
and stranger
experiences and

finally,
perhaps after you die,
it will all
become clear and

you
will
understand.

1984

woil

Pastorale

World Poetry Day 2016

Valentine

My War So Long Ago

image from the Peace Pledge Union www.ppu.org.uk 

My station built,
So many round me leading
And I not led.

My living spilt,
So many round me bleeding
And I unbled.

My sorrow's quilt,
So many round me crying,
My tears unshed.

My touch of guilt,
So many round me dying
And I not dead.

Meditation

Autumn Tree- Mull
© Judith Murray

I sat
And sought
The tree-ness
Of the tree
And found the tree's
Own search to be
The me-ness
Of the me.

Birthday Tree

Happy Birthday Granny! 

Anniversary

The Poem

From the writer's own typed collection

The Auld Enemy (last of four short poems)

               It's not so much that we

have long memories
as that it is still
happening to us.

For Robin Oliphant 1933 - 2015

Today we say goodbye to Robin Oliphant, Artist (and Grandpa's wee brother) who died on Sunday 8th March at the age of 81.

The Magic Door

Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Nor yet regret the room you are to leave.
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Though going, and your imprint's loss offends,
And you ever reluctant to bereave,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And if the blanket of the past descends,
Seduces you to sorrow and to grieve,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Those old men cashing wisdom's dividends,
Recalling what a foreguard can achieve,
Step lightly through the magic door to friends.

And, seeing with perception that transcends
The images myopic eyes perceive,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

Consider then, as your last pace impends,
The greetings you are likely to receive.
Step lightly through the magic door to friends,
Dream more of new beginnings than of ends.

A Course Of Action

Something must be done!
Something drastic, something
to assuage the bleak, black guilt
felt for all the whales, the dolphins
flown to their icarus suns,

for all the black babes in Africa
metamorphosed into
matchstick men by fat, white
market forces everywhere,

for all the blistered lungs,
the profitably powdered
living bone, the purple pulp
of the imploding, pulsing flesh
of peasants in three continents.

Something must be done.
Something personal to me,
and enraged symbology,
a protest with posters,
a suicidal leap perhaps
from a ground-floor window.

How About A Poem

Something of beauty
in its sounds,
in its images.

Profound
in its meanings,
in its insights.

Evocative
of deep feeling,
of soul-searching.

A touch of melancholy
for the melancholy man.

Earnest,
concerned,

AND FATALLY FLAWED.

Intent on telling the tales
of the saint who grassed
to the secret police
on his father's politics,

and the angel
in the bar of Heaven,
masturbating.

You

You
Cry rivers,
Rage rapids,
Croon the deep dark loch's
Eternal mystery.

You
Move and are
Like a glacier,
inexorable.

I
Am waist-deep
In you,
Heart-deep.

I
Drown gladly
In your discharges.

Funeral In Lewis

We lowered the coffin ourselves into

the grave and threw the cords on top.

Sea-wind, gentle for Lewis, stroked

my face. The poem sounded right

and I consigned John's body to

the raw, cleansing earth and commended

his spirit to the love of our

ancestors. Amen. Nor was that

pretentious. I could have accepted

his saying the same over me.

We did the filling-in ourselves

and left the old grave-keeping man

treading the turfs across the scar,

stooped, deliberate, at home

among the random headstones.

Crossing The Minch, and on that long

car journey south from Ullapool

I thought about the funeral.

I thought it was an honest one.

I think it was an honest one.

Our Love

Not for nothing
did the love that we have known
last all these years.
It is no small thing -
though we be small -
the force that flashed between us
and went on.

Unattenuated by the law
of the inverse square
which gutters light
and is the quenching maw
of the magnetic spectrum,
our little fondnesses
which modulate love's carrier wave
are taken in an instant,
with no reference to velocity,
outwards in quantum leaps
to the very rim of time.

Any lovers anywhere
could tap and live our love
with just a prayer,
a suitable antenna,
and perhaps a flair
for frequency.

No!
It is no small thing,
our love,
our spiralling,
eternal
love.