Michael Maxwell Steer

Could I but spin a golden melody
from myself as a spider draws
her silken web, whose very flaws
make perfect records of her busy body.
...

When the everyday miracle, love, strikes
all the resonant chords within us chime
and even the tawdry ruts of likes and dislikes
dissolve into harmonies of rhyme.
...

The priest withdraws to the chancel, attended by acolytes
and followed by worshippers - straggling throu the rough stone arch,
a hundred in all maybe: the old ones wearing black,
but also young urban families with anxious mothers in head-scarves,
...

In darkness is the light.
In the unseen, the form of what is to be.
Love blooms in a stony wasteland just as in a garden -
So God fills every heart held hollow for hir.
...

They do not require justification,
They are.

Their hearts beat lightly
...

When I kissed my mother for the last time, she was no longer there.
Her hands still waved, as if seeking to drink,
but her mind had already passed over the great river
and was safe on the other side, beyond the power of hurt.
...

The gift in death
is one of ultimate clarity.
All that obsesses us
in our humdrum lives abruptly
...

And so it's down to this:
from my mother I'd wanted
a sense of place in the world -
but this she couldn't give me,
...

I have not lost a mother, but gained a guide.
Released from flesh, and all that that implies,
I feel her presence now - a joyful bride
entering the royal mansion of the skies.
...

Lord by your mercy
let me be her work.
Bring me to completion
as she would have wished …
...

In a relationship that doesn't quite work
with a parent we are constantly like
a mechanism that reaches a point
where another gear should engage …
...

The letters tumble off the page,
which becomes a vacuum,
and terror like a beast uncaged
prowls the white & glaring room.
...

Here in this hallowed earth your body we rest,
Here where the service of God has been honoured for centuries:
Here where the spirits of all ancient souls are present
to welcome you back to the land of the living and free:
...

There are dimensions of life in another person
we cannot possibly know, even with someone
like a mother, to whom we're as intimately bound.
While she was alive I could not decode mine:
...

O that I could weep, that my tears would flow.
I'd cry not for the dead but for the living -
And for the gulf twixt quick and dead where no
psychic bridge admits a last forgiving;
...

I admire the quiet dignity you bring
to what you do, and the degree of thought
and care you apply to everything.
Maybe some things don't turn out as they ought -
...

Imagine! The girl in the picture with her kitty
has become the beautiful girl on the album cover.
The transformation from the little mimit to the witty
chanteuse hasn't been pain-free, and maybe isn't over -
...

‘Fabdaughter' was your choice of computer password:
and no phrase better captures my regard.
A constant inspiration, I feel empowered
by your creative aim to change the world.
...

We write of love to those we scarcely know,
yet those we ‘have and hold' we let go by.
Each marriage is its own mythology:
we love our loves but fail to tell them so.
...

As you go over the rim of the sea
into the dark ocean
I wave and wave
but the tide that bears you does not turn back.
...