LIGHT IN THE WAKE OF A STORM The rain fell so hard today that the earth felt like it might wash away in one long flood of tears but when the dark lifted and the thunder drum gave up it’s final roll the last word belonged to the light for in the wake of the…
Author: Liz Campbell
Here With Us
How is it that the world keeps going when your heart stopped? How does the sun rise and shed warmth and the earth spin on and my chest rise and fall with breath, when yours is gone? How strange that as you left, stepping out of the fabric of all we see and feel and…
Facade
Facade Grief hides in the corners of smiles and anguish in sighs unseen by the sigher I’m fine thanks. How are you? If only we all had permission not to hide but to cry loud and wailing-long and let the ocean wash us through to relationship and truth
A Poem For My Mother
Your’s the first heart beat I heard Your’s the voice in foetal ears Your’s the face that my eyes sought Your’s the eyes that calmed my fear. You held me close when I first breathed My tiny body heaving air You woke to all my frantic cries You sang your songs, You held my tears….
Oceans
If I could wrap up the oceans
and enfold you in their tears
would their salty drops
encourage you to cry?
The Fall
The Fall She reached she couldn’t help it his words were so true so very obviously true so lined with beckoning truth aligned with all she wanted to be true compelling enough to wedge doubt into her heart like a splintering and a breaking Her first love had lied surely he had lied surely this…
I Wish I Could Have Said Thank You in the Dark
I wish I could have said thank you in the dark
It would have been more heroic
I wish I could have stood my ground in courage
and planted my feet, fearless in the fog
Instead, I fell long and deep and slow…
In the Stillness
In the stillness
the steam from my cup
rises with a cymbal crash
In the stillness
the clock ticks
like a time bomb on the wall…
One Day
When I scattered the stars in space
I knew one day you would see them
That one day they would lead you to me
When I made the waves roll on the sand
I knew one day you’d chase along them
That one-day they would lead you to me
I was thinking of you when I made the grassy hills
I knew one day you’d love to climb them
That one day they would lead you to me…
Where Am I From?
“Where are you from?” she asked me, well-meaning eyes expecting an answer that would fit neatly into this cup of tea after church world we’d stumbled into like refugees from another planet.
I blinked. My voice stumbling lost in my dark throat…
The Border Line
The problem is with the seeing.
If you never see their pain
you’d never feel it
wrap around your heart
quickening it’s beat
squeezing you to act.
The problem is with the hearing…
A God Nearby
A GOD NEARBY
When battles fought and battles lost
roll as waves upon my shore
when I with tired and weary soul
wouldst sink and breath no more…
When the Dust Has Settled
When the dust has settled
over the mound where we lay you
will the cavern in our hearts
likewise fill with earth?
Joy
I heard your spirit singing
through the cage of your skin…
Dis-Location
This weeks poem… on my experience of moving countries.
A New Life
Something died
and fell long
and slow and deep
into darkness…
A New Beginning… Again
Hello Friends,
As this new year begins afresh, so I am beginning afresh to write here on this, my personal writings site, ‘Seeing Breathing Living: Life As a Human Being’…
The Passing of You
A tear opened up in the fabric of our existence and you walked through it into all eternity Leaving us behind staring at the empty air that used to enfold the existence of you So deep a space that all our tears cannot fill it So loved a space that our hearts now ache in…
A Gift For You This Christmas…
I’ve been working on something fun for you for Christmas this year over at my story site ‘The Long Walk’ and I didn’t want you to miss out… so here it is!
Dust and Breath
Breath, it can feel so light, so frail in these days that steal our breath away. We know it now too much. This fight to hold onto breath in a world that chokes it out of us…
Beginning…(Shrove Tuesday)
Because Easter. In the end. It’s always been a story. The truest of stories. The longest of stories. The one true story that began before we began, the living story that has yet to reach its full conclusion. This story about Jesus- not the religious one, but the real one; the one with Galilean dust in His sandals and the depth of a thousand galaxies in His eyes….
You Came: Emmanuel
You Came: Emmanuel Into the darkness, into the dim into the coldness closing in into our stress and whirring fear into our lonely empty tears You came. Into the hopeless stretching grey into the sickness scraping days into this world brinking despair into our greed that set it there You came. Into…
On Losing You.
On losing you. Strange how air can be so emptied out like a hole opening up where you once laughed like a gash and an ache in that space in me the space where you had always been. And now are not. It is not really a loss I tell myself. not a losing, not…
Drawing in the Dirt
We didn’t begin with a loud bang. We didn’t begin with a “Let there be- and it was so”. We didn’t begin with words at all.
We began with a silence that can be so loud. As loud as the sound of our own beating heart, reminding us that it is there….
Some Poems are Best Left Wordless…
Some poems are best left wordless. Like wonder.
Keep Moving (World Refugee Day)
It wasn’t your fault
that when you were three
bullets fell like rain
and blood ran down the road
flooding streets with pain
of a war nobody wanted
Keep moving
The Border Line (World Refugee Day)
The Border Line (World Refugee Day) The problem is with the seeing. If you never see their pain You’d never feel it Wrap around your heart, Quickening it’s beat. Squeezing you to act. The problem is with the hearing. If you never hear the sounds of deep despair you’ll never know it, deep within your…
Refugee (World Refugee Day)
Do you really think
that when they leave
their bullet riddled homes
they really believe in a world
that cares
if they live
or die
on the journey
Somewhere?
Questions, Answers and the Stories in Between
Questions, Answers and the Stories in Between “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40 An exploration of ‘The Good Samaritan’ story from Luke 10:25-37. Questions, we have them; identity questions, morality questions, existential…