Mundanus

Teresa Durran

 

Just think of all those hours where

You weren’t ill, weren’t lost or heartbroken

Weren’t unhappy, weren’t distressed

Nor tortured with words, spoken or unspoken

 

When you were going about your business as usual.

Distractedly, maybe, bored, barely awake,

But not in pain, unhappy, feeling desperate

Or wracked with self-doubt, or shattered by heartbreak,

 

Or broken by yet another rejection.

Those are the hours your life is measured by,

They are the sum and totality of you.

The mundane is where we live and die

 

It is where drama, pain, trauma and love find us.

Sought out by their remorseless light

It is where we ready ourselves for them.

Use these hours wisely. They are not finite

Advent

Teresa Durran 

 

The inky dark December sky outside is punctured

Holed by a luminous moon, cold and full and bright.

But inside, there are three candles and eleven tea lights burning

There is peace, there is warmth, there is complete quiet.

 

Shifting currents below the surface are heralding something good

An almost imperceptible sense of motion quivering the air;

I sense a faint scent, a trace of a taste on the edge of my tongue,

The aroma of hope. A hint of something stirring. Something’s there.

 

Tantalising. Something deeply hidden is turning over,

Slowly but steadily, like a flower bulb moving below ground

To reach cold winter light far above. Like a mediaeval coin

Long buried in a field, waiting for the right moment to be found.

 

Spring is distant but all is not lost.

Sunlight always overwhelms frost

Teresa Durran Poetry

Teresa Durran 

• Umbrae
• Advent

Umbrae

Teresa Durran 

You can’t run away from ghosts. They’re too sly for that.

They slip and slide after you, seeping through cracks

In your consciousness. That grey silence just before dawn

Where your fears rush in and create a gap?

That’s their favourite place. Their space.

 

Throw yourself into your work. Go on.

Add hours to your day, have a full calendar.

They don’t and won’t care. They’ll just stay,

Half formed, opaque, happy to delay

You have to pause for breath sometime, don’t you?

 

They know this. They know you better than you care to believe.

Paused between dream and day, between think and say

They’ll find you. At your lowest, they’ll remind you

Of all the memories and fears you thought

You’d so cleverly left behind you.

 

Try this. Welcome them in. Face them down.

Stop, and slowly turn to gaze directly in their eye.

Say ‘hi, come on then, I’m here, do your worst’.

Say ‘is that all you’ve got?’. Because it will be. Burst

the spectre of fear. It isn’t scary at all if you soak it with love