Five Poems by John Drudge

 

Without Eyes 

 

Art never lies 

It’s an alchemy 

Of pure truth 

Of ourselves 

Of others 

And the space  

Between 

Love  

Tears 

And lies 

The universe distilled 

Into the internal 

And external 

Of the dark ages 

Of light 

Shadows in the sun 

Alpha and Omega 

Down in the catacombs 

Mystery and magic 

Transcendence  

Into the deepness  

Of our hiding places 

Secret signs 

And hidden meanings 

The symbol of the fish 

Hieroglyphics 

And anchors 

To the stones  

Of our existence 

A dictation  

Of our salvation 

And understanding  

Without eyes

Undone 

 

The world winds down 

As touch withdraws 

In the silence of one 

In the wilderness 

And in the dying of light 

In the summer sun 

And somewhere over the hills 

It’s softly heard 

With the sound  

Of it all 

Coming undone

Unfolding 

 

We are the collective 

Consciousness 

Of the universe 

The patterns of tension 

Between good and evil 

A twist in the shape 

Of the cosmos 

An undoing 

An unravelling 

And a coming together  

Again 

We are a helix of air 

In a bowl of stardust 

We are everything  

All at once 

And nothing at all 

We are the times 

That aren’t time 

The pride before the fall 

Super Novas in the end 

In the revelations 

Of darkness 

Unfolding

Beyond 

 

When the last breath 
Loosens its hold 
And the body 
Releases its borrowed weight 
You step into a place 

Without edges 
Where silence is warm 
And light remembers you 
And the small self 
That worried over time 
Melts into something vast 
And familiar 
Like returning to an ocean 

You had never left

Into the Gap 

 

Big things 

In the centre 

Of silent minds 

A gap in time 

Movement in space 

And not 

A slip in the quantum field 

A dim pinch 

At the back of the skull 

Meaning 

Sliding into something else 

A trip 

Into the wild unknown

John Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of seven books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), Fragments (2021), A Long Walk (2023), A Curious Art (2024) and Sojourns (2024) . His work has appeared widely in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.