Michael Maxwell Steer Poems

Could I but spin a golden melody
from myself as a spider draws
her silken web, whose very flaws
make perfect records of her busy body.
...

When the everyday miracle, love, strikes
all the resonant chords within us chime
and even the tawdry ruts of likes and dislikes
dissolve into harmonies of rhyme.
...

The priest withdraws to the chancel, attended by acolytes
and followed by worshippers - straggling throu the rough stone arch,
a hundred in all maybe: the old ones wearing black,
but also young urban families with anxious mothers in head-scarves,
...

In darkness is the light.
In the unseen, the form of what is to be.
Love blooms in a stony wasteland just as in a garden -
So God fills every heart held hollow for hir.
...

They do not require justification,
They are.

Their hearts beat lightly
...

When I kissed my mother for the last time, she was no longer there.
Her hands still waved, as if seeking to drink,
but her mind had already passed over the great river
and was safe on the other side, beyond the power of hurt.
...

The gift in death
is one of ultimate clarity.
All that obsesses us
in our humdrum lives abruptly
...

And so it's down to this:
from my mother I'd wanted
a sense of place in the world -
but this she couldn't give me,
...

I have not lost a mother, but gained a guide.
Released from flesh, and all that that implies,
I feel her presence now - a joyful bride
entering the royal mansion of the skies.
...

Lord by your mercy
let me be her work.
Bring me to completion
as she would have wished …
...