It makes sense – I’ll use my loaf

Is this the sun, 
condensed into a flower? 
Distant energy 
facilitates fine subdivision, 
mitochondrial machination 
building petal, 
sepal, 
branch 
and bower.

Sound struggles, beats on baffles beneath the strings. Sweet escape eludes then exudes mellifluously.
Pine needles, waft, scent air evoking place and season, sharp to unshod foot yet gentle olfaction, calms… relaxation.
Sensate to a feather brushing my cheek, soft, sensuous, soothing, like these sibilant characters typed on a page.
Childhood memories evoked as yeast, after millennia waiting, interacts in the present tense. Air carries intense anticipation of taste across the park, use my loaf, collect my daily bread.
AnDrew Pratt 8/2/2021

A poem for Holocaust Memorial Day

A poem for Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January, and going forward. Today we still need to remember our human capacity for inhumanity, that the Holocaust took place in a democratic country with a democratically elected government, and still within living memory. Remember, many of the perpetrators saw themselves as ‘Christian’.


1 As we remember holocaust,
in horror disbelieving
the history of the human race,
we share each other's grieving;
God purge us of hypocrisy,
of all our self-deceiving.

2 Our language is inadequate,
unfit for the expression
of hatred that we visualise,
humanity's confession;
we hurry headlong into hell,
we witness love's regression.

3 The deepest, distant agony
that throbs through all creation,
the silent tears that quietly fall
in every generation,
are signs of our humanity,
our need for re-creation.

4 God give us strength to make a pledge
to move beyond contention,
to see, in each, humanity.
Through greater good intention,
God, move us toward a purer love,
a gracious intervention.

Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2003 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.