My Poem ‘The Man On The Hill’

There is a man who lives in a house on the hill,
there is a man who looks over on the village of his birth,
who comes down from his home from time to time
to be among other people, to buy a news paper,
and sometimes just to pay a bill.
People say that the man is a mystery,
people say that the man is a ghost,
people say that he lives on his own
because he is suffering from a broken heart that never mended,
people say that he doesn’t have an address-
no house name, no house number, no street name-
so you can’t contact him by post.

The man on the hill doesn’t have a name,
at least not one that is widely known,
the man on the hill can’t remember the last time
someone actually called him by his birth name-
he never says a word to anyone anymore,
no one even realizes that he is there.
People stopped ringing him years ago-
one day he decided that he had no need to be in contact with anyone,
so he disconnected his phone.

The man on the hill can be seen in the flesh,
if you are ever in the centre of England,
if you are ever in a park in Coventry
and you see a man sitting alone on a bench reading a book-
if you take the time to approach the man, to introduce yourself,
and to tell him that you’ve heard all about him,
he might raise his head, he might smile back at you,
but in his eyes you will see a very sad look.

The man on the hill walks everywhere.
The man on the hill goes out in the morning
and comes home at night,
full of new thoughts, old memories-
always seen in the same clothes, with the same haircut,
as if he has nothing else to wear.

The man on the hill used to know everyone,
and everyone used to know him-
beyond the legend that surrounds him,
beyond the shadow that he carries along with him.
The man on the hill’s story is a long, tragic, and sad tale-
a journey that came to a grinding halt one summer afternoon, long ago,
but where the man on the hill came from,
and how ended up becoming the man on the hill,
is complicated to explain, and even he would find it hard
knowing where to begin.

There is a man who lives on a hill
who once made a difference;
there is a man who lives on a hill
who thought he had the entire universe figured out,
until something happened to him that changed him forever-
and now the universe, to him, just doesn’t make any sense.

There is a man who lives on a hill,
who is waiting for the right person to come back into his life;
there is a man who lives on a hill,
who wants to simply remember what it is like to be alive.
There is a man who lives in a house, by himself,
who if you knocked on his door he would shower you with goodwill;
there is a man who just wants to be remembered,
who wants to dies happy again-
that man is the man on the hill.

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My Poem ‘Legacy’

A flash of light.
The birth of something vast, and yet infinitesimally small.
A seed of life in a perpetual night.
The rise of consciousness, chaos, order, and the legacy of all.

Oceans of energy, tides of infinite direction and dimension,
islands of independence and inter-dependency
all in a constant state of reinvention, floating, twisting, and turning,
on a perceivably black but in reality multi-coloured sea.

Every galaxy, every star, every planet, every quantum of life,
has a legacy and also an ancestry and a lineage to the light
that still illuminates after billions of years-
a celestial bloodline that links every newborn to every nebula,
that stems from the core of every planet
to the heart of every intergalactic pioneer.

The legacy of humanity is the same correlating story as that of the universe,
and has been since that first evolutionary flash-
and that symbiosis will continue to last
even after what we think of ourselves and the world
has returned to dust and ash.

Their are some who fear the unknown depths of their own minds,
just as they fear the oceans of Earth,
or the uncertainty and the confusion of the dark-
such trepidation has a gravity to it that is easy to orbit,
but which at the same time holds them back
and colours their view of the world stark.

Just as the light from stars continues to shine
long after they expel their final solo performance to the audience
of their intergalactic neighbours-
every form of energy, every particle, every person, affects another-
even as it dims and wavers.

The way we were, the way we are, the way we are going,
the way we have always been, and the way we are always going to be,
is life, the universe, the beginning, the end, existing as one,
then and now- and in a word,
that is our legacy.