A Wider View

(Picture by NASA)

If God exists

He or She knows All

Is Everywhere

And Everywhen

And lives beyond

Space and Time.

For so it is to be a God.

 

She is far too great

To concern herself

With this grain of sand

Lost in the vastness of our Multiverse.

 

Our words can’t hurt Her,

Maybe make Her smile at most,

Even as we take Her name in vain.

Our petty squabbles

Are but fights

Amongst the ants.

 

She Loves all Life,

Though some be sacrificed at times

For the Greater Good.

 

I ask you all

To open your mind

And see us through Her eyes.

She cannot want us

To martyr ourselves

Or kill those who are different

In race or creed.

 

She will not give us Heaven

If we sacrifice our lives

To kill Her creatures

That she made

With such magnificent grace.

 

Above all else She is a Loving God,

Cherishing ALL that Lives.

Forget the ancient histories

Of warring and strife.

NOW is where we are,

And now is the Time

For Love.

 

Paul Butters

The Way

There is no need for all this strife,

All that’s required is Love of Life.

Religions and philosophies all seek Good,

Trying to get us out of this wood.

All you need is Love, The Beatles said,

So let’s put Evil and Hatred to bed.

 

Christian, Muslim or worshipping Buddha,

Atheist, Humanist, Taoist, Shinto, Hindu, Wiccan or any other,

It doesn’t matter for you are my Brother.

We’re all the same in God’s loving eyes

(Whether you believe or not)

From mighty whales to tiny flies.

 

Tigers bite and wasps do sting,

But each of them is a black and gold thing.

Life is precious in every form,

We all get beaten by that storm.

 

Give us a wormhole and we will find

Countless exoplanets that’ll blow your mind.

In the swathe of the universe we are but a speck,

Prepare yourself for an endless Star Trek.

 

But first we need to put our own Earth right,

And now it’s such a sorry sight.

Having technology is all very well

If all you can make is our version of Hell.

The human mind is far behind I hate to say,

We have to find the Loving Way.

 

Paul Butters

 

© PB 25\8\2015.

Sound

(Picture Credit - Chicenter com)

A poem is built with sounds

Liberally littered with alliteration

Rhyming reason

Aspiring assonance

Up metaphorical mountains.

 

Each letter plays its part.

A cast of cascading chords

Making mystical music

For the discerning ear.

 

Operatic musicals from the Muse:

A crescendo of noise

Or sometimes

Whispers in the winnowing wind.

 

I write because I must,

Because I need to

In answer to

The Call.

 

Paul Butters

Sun

(Photo Credit - Vitalsurge com)

The Sun’s beaming smile

Bathes the plains with gold.

Lord of the heavens,

Circled by your sons

We call planets,

Your searing heat

Keeps us warm

And well.

 

I love the summer

With those shiny beaches:

Radiant reflections

Kissed by sky-blue surf.

 

Sun, you are a surge of nuclear bombs

Devastating the darkness,

Destroying the frosts of outer space.

 

Blindingly beautiful

Yet you redden evening clouds:

Red sky at night delight

Indeed.

 

Ball, orb, sphere, call you what you will,

Sol if you prefer.

The pale moon mimics you

Even blocks you at times,

But you are never eclipsed for long.

 

The sky is your playing field

Though the starry crowd is hidden

From your fiery light.

 

See the sky brighten

Just before dawn,

Then witness the birth

Of another fine day.

 

Paul Butters

To Be

 

(Picture Credit - Morethanasunday faith com)

I will be,

Or I will not be,

When I die.

The logic goes.

More likely the latter,

But who knows?

 

The Bard was right:

A simple choice

Between

What is

And what isn’t.

 

Unless you take the Spiritual View

Or even

Reincarnation.

 

What might I come back as?

I have to ask.

A lion or an Ant?

 

Is everything a dream?

Or just some Godly idea

Of a Joke?

 

The Truth

We Seek.

 

Paul Butters

Holy Spirit

(Picture Credit - Pentecost by Jacqui on Swordofthespiritnet)

The Laws of Physics say

That Everyone Dies

And is Gone:

Every blade of grass, insect, man and woman.

Every sentient being.

From Big Bang to Big Whatever.

They all Die.

 

Yet is there more than this?

Something of the spirit.

More than ghosts

And poltergeists.

An afterlife

In Heaven.

Another Realm.

 

Some say that when you die

You re-join The One Being,

Let’s call it “God”.

 

Your individuality may be gone,

But you become part of that Super-Consciousness,

The One,

And thus Remain.

 

The logic of this is frightening:

It means that I am part of God,

Just going through a phase

We call Life,

In readiness for

For Ever.

 

You too are part of God

And logic dictates

That I am my own Mum and Dad,

My sister, friends and everyone else:

Mother Theresa, Hitler, Shakespeare

And Eddie The Eagle.

 

I am a wasp, a lion, a dolphin, a tree

Maybe even a germ.

Another poet

Commenting on my poems.

I’m even You.

 

Better get on with it then.

I’ve got plenty to do!

 

Paul Butters

Eternal Infinity

(Picture Credit - NASA)

 

 

Our scientists say that before The Big Bang

There was Nothing

And therefore

No God.

 

Through red-shifted space they “see”

Back to The Beginning.

Exploding Singularity.

A photon winks into existence

And BOOM.

 

Yes they are conceited enough to think

That all we see is all there is to know.

Like people pre-Pythagoras

Who thought the Earth was flat

They Lord it

With Confidence.

 

Yet Eternal Infinity

Beckons us on.

 

A light year is 5,878,499,810,000 miles.

An estimated 81,000 years Ion-Drive flight to the nearest star.

About 100 thousand million galaxies in the universe:

70 thousand million million million stars.

But we know it all.

 

Some say our universe is a bubble

Growing within another

Like a baby in a womb.

 

Some say it will grow forever,

Slowly petering out

‘Til all is cold.

Others that it will stop, shrink

Implode

Then be reborn

With another Big Bang.

 

Who knows what will happen?

Not me.

 

Paul Butters



Aware

(Picture Credit - Galaxy Centre by Space com)

We are aware that we are,

But who is there to tell?

Will anyone know we were,

Once we leave this mortal shell?

 

Are we here just by chance?

From a Cosmic Dance?

No Hot Jupiter near our Sun,

Our system is The One

For Life.

 

We may well be unique,

The rest of space looks bleak.

A single winning bet

Consciousness did beget.

 

We are the living race,

Here by God’s good grace.

 

Paul Butters

Forsythias

(Picture Credit - Paul Butters)

Forsythias flower now,

A shock of yellow petals

Matching my Daffodils.

Pure yellow,

Brighter than the sun.

Galaxies of petal-stars

Hanging from spiral arms.

As numerous as a shoal of fish,

Or flock of birds.

Nature stuns us with its numbers.

 

Winter hangs on

With chilling grip.

But blossoms like these hold promise

Of warmer days.

My crocuses were first:

Defiant spears thrusting into the frosty air.

And now the second wave is here:

Flower after flower,

Bird after bird:

Robins and Blue tits,

Blackbirds and Sparrows.

Pesky gnats are out

As everything awakes

From hibernation.

Yes Spring is here,

Showing us once more

The sheer resilience of Life.

 

Paul Butters

Prose Verses Poetry

Prose is writing that goes right across the page. It rolls on, sentence after sentence, usually about things mundane.

But Verse is where you yourself

Decide the length of

Line.

 

Or stanza indeed. Some call lines “verses”. They can be very long.

Or short.

Iambic metre may be used

And other metres too.

You can write anapaests if you wish.

 

Yet Poetry is neither prose nor verse

As such.

It is about skyscraper forests looming large,

Trees spiking though mysterious mists.

Poetry is sunshine, filling your heart

With radiant joy.

Black nights of deep depression

Give way to a golden dawn.

The lonely

Find Love.

That’s Poetry.

 

Paul Butters

All Relative

(Picture Credit - NASA)

Without Nothing there cannot be Something.

Non-Existence precedes Existence.

No Dark means no Light.

No cold no hot, no soft no hard, no death no life.

Up and down, left and right, East and West.

Calm then storm, stillness then action,

Heavy and light.

Chaos and Order.

The finite and the infinite.

All compare.

All are Relative.

Without Something there is no Nothing.

Without Light no Dark.

No Knowledge no Mystery.

No Mystery no Knowledge.

All Relative.

 

Paul Butters

Some of my Favourite Poems by Other Poets

(Picture Credit - John Keats by PoetryFoundation Org) To Autumn by John Keats
1. SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. ...And from "I Stood tip-toe upon a little hill" "Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things, To bind them all about with tiny rings.     Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet’s rushy banks, And watch intently Nature’s gentle doings: They will be found softer than ring-dove’s cooings. How silent comes the water round that bend;          Not the minutest whisper does it send To the o’erhanging sallows: blades of grass Slowly across the chequer’d shadows pass. Why, you might read two sonnets, ere they reach To where the hurrying freshnesses aye preach          A natural sermon o’er their pebbly beds; Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, Staying their wavy bodies ’gainst the streams, To taste the luxury of sunny beams Temper’d with coolness. How they ever wrestle          With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand. If you but scantily hold out the hand, That very instant not one will remain; But turn your eye, and they are there again.          The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses, And cool themselves among the em’rald tresses" GM Hopkins -   NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief         Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing— Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling- ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.     O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap   May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep. Byzantium By William Butler Yeats 1865–1939 The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.