Writing

 

This land that surrounds

This land that has nurtured us

For so long

This land on which we stand

This land has no voice

This land is silent

This land is silent

This land has stood

Witness for so long, so long.

But if we took time

To listen to this land

We would hear its voice

We would hear it in the wind

And the lowing of the trees

We would hear its voice

In the grasses sigh

We would hear the land

In the rush of the rivers

And trickling of streams

This land in its silence sighs

Let me rest

Let me breathe

Open your eyes and see

Let me rest

Let me breathe

Let me renew

Let me rest

Leave me to green

Leave me to grow

This land cannot hide

This land cannot run

This land cannot pretend

To be somewhere else

It cannot disguise its pain

And what of the guardians

What of the people of this land

Are their eyes blind-folded

So tight that they cannot see

Or perhaps they face the other way

Distracted and deafened

So that they no longer

Hear the cry of the land

Let me breathe

Let me rest

Let me renew.

 

Rob Cullen

Taking time

It’s the hardest

Thing to do

Just sitting

Listening

In that way

We used to

As the candles

Licked and flicked

And I’d watch

Your eyes

And the gleam

Of your smile

And that feeling

When I made you

Forget and laugh

And we’d watch

The waves.

 

Rob Cullen

Untitled.

It was painful that experience

Of first love and the abruptness

Of that unexpected separation

Rejection how else was I supposed

To understand your disappearance.

You believed in direct action.

And I had walked away from Christ

But not the teaching of love

Supporting violence was not my cause.

It was the first and last time we argued

And then you were gone

And love. My love was left

Fluttering in the darkness.

I’d thought it was better to work

From within. A compromise

You’d said. I wanted no labels

Attached to me. But no matter

What I said or did to avoid this

Providing the machine with an excuse

To dismiss. Devoid of reason

They went ahead in any case.

For forty years I’d worked

To help and speak  for those

Appointed and anointed as the cause

Of societies shame and failings.

And at a time when I was brought

to my knees and my belief

and hope suddenly made to falter

I sought you out –  that place

that time when it felt like

there was a degree of certainty

to see what you had done

with your life and whether you’d found

an answer or even happiness

The first search brought up

Your face from a photograph

In your obituary I recognised

had been taken at that time.

In that place that house

Where we had lived together

And you were gone again.