Dear KOM-ers!
We’re so happy to feature a new book giveaway!
Please enjoy this excerpt from “Lost for Words” by Martin Wells.
There are 2 ways to enter to win a FREE hard copy:
- Leave a comment below with your email address (so we can contact you)
- Email us at KOMWriting@gmail.com with the Subject: Lost for Words giveaway entry
The winner will be randomly selected on 12/19/22 and announced on our website and social media. *
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In the early hours of almost every morning during the Covid lockdown in the months of March and April 2021, these poems began mysteriously arriving – like persistent early morning visitors. Curiously, the author’s wife was absent for the whole of this time, and much to her amusement, in her place lay an open notebook, a blank page and a pen.
Soon nearly 40 poems filled the notebook – Martin never having written poetry in his life before. Although the pandemic provides the foreground for this collection of poems, they have also been prompted by timeless universal themes, symbolized in a snowdrop, a park bench or an olive tree; found in conversations about love and life and death, in news items and random images. But most of all arising out of that deep longing for union and freedom at the source of each of us. The poems are about what it means to be alive and deeply connected to the natural world. In so doing, they go to the heart of mindful living and non-dual wisdom.
Excerpt:
The Thorns of Shame
How the thorns of shame close around the heart.
Nothing can be said
in years of painful isolation.
Nothing shared
within the ice cold fear
of exposure.
Any thawing out
a tender pain renewed.
Men in trenches,
heads down,
shivering.
Women voiceless
in passive acquiescence.
Neither stepping into that unknown field
Where humiliation
may become humility.
No inner work
heals this wound.
Only in the friendship
of fellow travellers
can the heart dissolve
in the shared warmth of acceptance.
Here the darkest thought,
or memory
melts into the mutual embrace
of each new present moment
and the deepest union of the soul.
In Gratitude
A heartfelt thanks for all the gifts
that arrive before the dawn,
for all the ink that flows
through this receptive pen,
for all the words that come
to fill my head and heart.
For ease of speech I say ‘they’re mine’
but this does not convey
a flow from somewhere else,
half dreams, half passive images.
Yes, water’s here,
but flat without a current,
surging, streaming, vibrant.
A seed blown off the static tree,
without a plan or a direction,
Life’s seeming random cycle.
Or as each breath unbidden,
not chosen or constructed,
the joy of being breathed.
I am the heart, the vital organ,
pumping energy and blood,
but not the source, the mystery,
not seen but everywhere;
in every trickling brook or crashing wave,
in every field of corn and hungry lion’s roar,
in the swooping of the buzzard
and the landing of the snowflake.
River and bank, nectar and bee,
all life’s wonders
glimpsed
in precious harmony.
In truth no one to thank,
perhaps just that desert flower’s joy
when Autumn rains come thumping down,
both rain and flower and saturated earth
forever changed.
Dear India
So many troubled times you’ve seen,
so much conflict,
so much greed
and massive inequality.
And yet a timeless peace is there
in every fibre of your being.
No words can do this justice
but, if I really listen,
there’s just a chance to hear
the silence of your marketplace,
the stillness of your thronging crowd,
the one long note that plays
behind each shop’s sitar,
behind each screeching crow
and every chugging tuk tuk.
You’re not my home
and yet you are,
quietly reminding
that all things shall pass,
not one thing disturbing
your love and understanding.
All life’s agitations dissolving
in the quiet healing warmth
of your all accepting gaze.
The Roots of Love
The roots of love cannot be seen
but only surely known,
every year growing deeper
Yes, in the darkness
but married to the light
as perfect mirrors,
two aspects of the One.
The joyous gifts of leaf and flower,
not possible without the depth,
the reaching for the sky,
by earth supported,
earth nourished in the reaching,
Nature’s balanced being
a mirror to the human eye
if only it will open.
Each human love reflected
in the dew drop on the rose
and every distant star,
life on Earth’s reminders
of what we truly are.
A Hidden Life
Here lies Jane Smith.
You won’t have heard of her.
She gave life through sacrifice,
made mistakes
but in every moment did her best.
She was never on TV,
her little flat was not her own.
She really tried to make her marriage work,
to make the most of what she had,
but the bruising would not stop.
So she took the hero’s journey,
out into the unknown
with her flock.
Penniless but free,
safer but not safe,
facing other new fears
with enough courage
to inspire a thousand lives.
Nothing shiny or exciting
but an ordinary love
expressed.
A life given so that others could be free
fulfilling Nature’s perfect plan.
* By entering this contest, you give consent to Kind Over Matter to use your name for promotional purposes on our website and on all social media.
NOTE: You can order Martin’s book from Hunt Publishing.
