I don’t suppose many people know that I have been writing poetry pretty much all my life. In fact I am currently preparing a book of poems for publication next year. This might not seem to tie in with my other writing - both fiction and non-fiction - but it of course does. It imbrues it (to use an old expression that means to ’steep in’ or ‘to soak with blood’). One is the sum of how one thinks, and poetry dictates much of that thinking, because it is a search for distilled truth. Poetry, at its best, illuminates a moment of clarity in the poet’s mind that is universal. That translates into the minds of other people. I would like to offer you a poem that I wrote in my head, standing by a river bank in Scotland, experiencing what Maslow called a ‘peak experience’ - or what G K Chesterton called ‘absurd good news’. What others, including myself, might call ‘union with God’. I would suggest you read the poem very slowly, savouring each sentence. Actually, read it as you will.

Atlantean Nights

mist coats the days
obscuring mystery
night thins the soul’s wall
magic enters

you stop on the path to the river
snug in God’s cup
love brimming
pregnant with understanding

in the quickening maze
you find yourself
conscious that everything
is one

consciousness leaves you
filling what seemed empty
with love’s music