SuperTrip 2025 Poems

Sea Scape

When I am gone,
I will be gone.
There will be no hole in the world.
Everyone will be okay.
It may even be a little better:
less CO2, more oxygen,
some potash for the roses,
less consumption,
but, perhaps, less wonder…

When I am gone,
I will be gone.
The space I took up,
that I occupied,
the space where I live
will simply cease to be:
a construct without a purpose;
a circle in the sand.

When I am gone.
I will be gone.
There is only the tide.

March, 2025, Spain

Sky Scape

The morning sun, climbing,
throws the world into shadows.

It holds my face with a long glance,
glints and rainbows on my lashes:
all the light and colours of the day
dancing there.

The world beyond, itself,
is only blue, for the sky,
and sharp-edged black,
for all the things below.
As if I didn’t know,
we each paint our own world;
choose and colour what we see.

Every morning, I walk east
into the sun’s night-black edges,
in order to be reminded
we are all dreaming.

March 2025, Spain

Twinned and Untwinned

I sit among the trees, listening,
watching this magnificent woman
describe herself as incomplete:
Soul-divided with another
long gone, long ago.

The dogs, curled on pillows at her feet,
doze, untroubled by the words.
Her voice, the song of one more bird
to call the leafy garden home
and, with calling, prove it so.

The gloss of ivy, claiming new boards in spring,
shivers in the dappled light.
Her hands pinch and smooth the air.
She tosses her hair, always to the right,
her left hand combing through.

I never knew that soul-kiss, the ricochet
that leaves you, and leaves you a half.
My path has seen my life entwined so many times,
I cannot parse the fractions that I share.
Pieces of me are everywhere.

Mine is a distributed soul, forever whole.

London, April 2025

The Questions of Evil

There is no question that evil exists.
We see it every day:
banal, systemic, petty, gestural;
the evil of ignorance, fear, of want;
the evil of turning fear and want into hate
and hate into power and harm.

The question of this kind of evil
both is, and isn’t, trivial;
both is, and isn’t, life-changing,
depending on your answer:
What, when, where will you act?
For and with whom? And how?

The question of evil I'm compelled to ask
is, and isn’t, whether it manifests,
or what we will do.
The question of evil I need to ask is:
Are we on our own here?

Is it birthed with us,
inherent in our selves,
or seeded there from another source?

Are we
the problem of evil,
or just its vessels, willing or not?

April 2025, Calgary

Occam's Razor

When I thought of these things
I understood evil as a residual:
Creation - a cacophony of free souls
God - an endless optimisation,
the greatest good for the greatest number,
refigured after every choice.
Evil - the friction, the error in rounding;
the cost of free will
and its constant proof.

But now I wonder:
If each of us harbour a Divine spark,
might there also be a Dark one?
And, might there also be
an organising principle of harm?

And I am troubled:
I am not, we are not, strong enough,
if this were true.
But, I know, too:
The simplest answer is the surest.

April 2025, Calgary