Patrick Dennis Poems

Joy is a way of looking at
you & me & this & that,
and all things that may
oh - heaven knows - cause us grief
...

Down from the trees, a Kookaburra,
tempted by the throwdown of meat, descends,
hops, chuckles and gobbles; and bounces back.
...

My memories are yesterday in the fern place
under the great convent house at Clermont,
going out for the last time from the lash
and curse of nuns. Unrehearsed, you come to me
...

'And there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watch over their flock.' (Luke 2: 8

On the icy dark, the ghostly shape of shepherds:
and the sheep like clumps of rock on the sea's shore
...

Did I ask for this? I who, before we met,
scratched the surface and sowed the weeds of my time.
What charms, what magic, what enchantment did you have?
You with the tang of fruit - sweet-half-ripe -
...

I feel but cannot hear the downward beat
of the owl's wings which seem to move
like a poem on feathered air.
...

I have seen snowcapped mountains and pristine fields
adorned with the blush and hues of Heaven;
but I live here on this arid plain
stretched four ways to infinity.
...

Fire purges in His fierce ecstasy all things of sap and clay
and takes to Himself - oh! - the refined and raptured brides of Fire.

Charcoal, well dried, longs for the Fire
...

Poems should clang
and pull against
like the tongues of church bells
out of synch with their housing.
...

Let me rush on to where
I stammer out the next failed thought
that dumbsdown my mind in the heat of composing.
...