Five Poems by Peter Lilly

 

Merging

 

Emerging from the tunnel

my reflection in the window

turns into a ghost on the brickwork

when we hit a station, then

particularity is masked by number

and I’m nowhere to be seen

replaced by the shoreline of the anonymous,

ready to be submerged.

 

Fortune

 

Passing storms dictate

short term everything

like a bad boss

pulling so much wool over

the best laid plans.

 

My only hope is

to share the space and time

with you.

 

my fortune ate

the inclement weather

as we make our own sunrise

within our doors.

Movement

find a movement

below the foundations

the earth is liquid

deeper than what we build upon

the irresistible entropy of flood

calls to accelerate your dispersion

yet nothing grows in the molten flow

and I want my movement to be

like the rings of expanding tree trunk

Passing

 

Paths are only soil

spoiled by walking,

compacted by shoes

so seeds cannot take root

in the hard earth.

 

There is now organic efficiency,

in growth, nor in transport.

Time is not to be measured

or manipulated, but felt

in participation with the sprouting

and withering leaves.

Flight

 

Being up here makes the world look so

small wonder the idols we make of ourselves.

 

There is no perception without participation

and soaring above the eagles

by the power of things you burn

is bound to rise like hot air

to the stuffy attic of your heard.

 

But the world is not small,

it contains symbiotic multiverses

thawing and freezing in the eye

of every beholder, and behind

the skin of all beheld.

 

The world doesn’t have to be small

for space to be big.

 

Every time you fly

stand barefoot on snow or soil

and look to the stars, or the close ceiling

of grey clouds. Feel all that is close

and all that is far, air the stale self-regard

from your loft, guiding the rest of you

that you left above, to land

earth, soil, mud and

the changing weather of being human.

Peter Lilly is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet who grew up in Gloucestershire, England. After studying theology and working with the homeless in London, he moved to the South of France in 2014. He lives in a rural village with his wife and son, where he concentrates on writing, community development and English teaching. He is the author of the collections ‘A Handful of Prayers’ (Wipf & Stock, 2024) and 'An Array of Vapour’ (TSL Publications, 2023).