Just heard from Canon Andrew White, Vicar of Baghdad, about the desperate situation in Iraq now that the US forces have left. There remains hope ... but it needs us to share the love of that baby who came so far to save us.


Look into the stable, feel the warmth inside.
See the loving mother, see the loving child.
See the adoration, hands and gifts are raised -
hear the angels worship, all creation praise ...


"Glory to God, in the highest place;
on the earth there will be peace",
if we share redeeming grace.


Look outside the stable, still the world's the same.
There's no room for Jesus, so few know his name.
Many hands are lifted as war and famine reign.
Hear the prayers of nations, as we cry again.



"Glory to God, in the highest place;
on the earth there will be peace",
if we share redeeming grace.


Look into your heart now, what do you see there?
Is there hope and comfort or a deep despair?
look back to the stable where the Promise lay,
hear the words of Jesus, "I AM com to save!"



"Glory to God, in the highest place;
on the earth there will be peace",
if we share redeeming grace.


(C) 2003 Graham Oakes

Folk at the Parish ...


Thursday, 1st December 2011 I read some poems at Merthyr Tydfil in aid of MacMillan Cancer Support and included a new one written for the occasion about Dic Penderyn, after whom the local Witherspoons is named! Nice curries on Thursdays!

"Dyma Gamwedd!"

Innocence is no defence

when scapegoats are required;

caught up in something bigger

than a single, just desire.

You march with fellow workers

their passion in your soul;

with little thought that very soon

you’ll have the starring role.

A soldier takes a bloody wound,

and you, my friend, were there.

So from the crowd you’re singled out

to cries of “that’s not fair!”’

The Government has had enough

of  Welshmen on the move.

They want to crush our wide dissent

they have a point to prove.

Against the power of Gentry rule,

of money and of might,

the workers’ cause is brought to heel

and many put to flight.

But you, young Dic Penderyn,

must stand upon the door.

And while you wait you tell them all

just what you’re dying for.

“O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd!”

“Lord, this is so unjust!”

And still this cry does echo,

and listen still they must!

© 2011

Also read this one which was written for Gail ...

Colour me ...

Onto the landscape

of my waiting canvas

brush me with love

and the finest of care.

Colour me free

with the joy of your laughter;

colour me deep

with the warmth of your smile.

Blue for the Spring

when we found each other,

and for your eyes

when they sparkle with fun.

Gold for the Summers

that we shared together,

and for your hair

that shines in the sun.

Brown for the Autumn:

its rhymes and its reasons

the richest of blessings,

for you are my wife.

Grey for the Winter

that closes the seasons,

yet hidden beneath it

the promise of life. 

© 2005

RESTORATION

I often walk along our Rhymney River through the now meadowed pathways where the railway sidings of Brittania Colliery used to be. The pit has gone, along with all physical evidence of its imposing and vital presence to the community which is now a different place to that which I grew up in ... but those of us who lived within its shadow cannot help but remember and wonder at the things that have been won and lost with its demise ...  this is one of my recent attempts to reflect on the changes

Black blood flowed 

down wounded valleys 

mixed with the rush of 

the iron-red streams

pumped from the heart 

of the virgin strata 

as men scratched low 

with their flesh and bone

for the loan of a loaf

a roof and a home.

Black scars marred 

the mountain moorland

shaped the run 

of the sun in the cwm

time clutched hard

to the wheel that winding

marked the birth and 

the death of the day

while doorsteps waited 

for their men to pay. 

Black shadows 

now a fading memory 

of washed out riches 

and wasted hills

as sunshine springs 

down natured pathways

new journeys weave

round the ancient track

for a rainbow promise 

and a long look back.

(c) 2009 Graham Oakes

Surprising Blade

“… she, for whatever reason, finds something loveable in this most unlovable of men … and the soul, once it’s insisted upon - being loved - has only one inevitable response and that is to love back and gradually a soul gets stitched ponderously back together and something resembling a human being gets reconstructed …”  

Bob Geldorf  in a  Radio 4 interview.


Surprising Blade.

Unlovely and unloving,
full of guilt and cold remorse;
taking much but seldom giving,
letting sorrow run its course.


All the world on the attack,
low you hide, without defence.
Centuries stoop upon your back
raising walls of dry pretence.


Tough the skin and hard the core,
yet you fail to stem the tears.
Resistance only brings to fore
words that fan the flaming fears.


Helpless you; and hopeless too,
Life has failed to satisfy.
Slow to dream of morrows new,
quick the thoughts to fall and die ...


Cold the heart … but hot the steel
of that Surprising Blade
which cuts, so deep, to purge and heal;
Glory strikes: the shadows fade.  


Light, for darkness long endured,
Love, for raw and hurting soul;
Life, for Ransom, full, assured,
Hope restored, as one made whole.


Now, renewed as fertile ground,
the wilderness, in thrice blessed praise    
with grateful songs to heaven resounds,
and lives to love eternal days.


© July 2011 Graham Oakes

Road Works

Croeso Ready Writers, June 2011. 

There’s only one thing worse than a hole in the road and that’s the disruption caused by trying to repair it.

It isn’t the hole’s fault; neither can we blame the road. If we are honest the reason the hole appeared in the first place is the weight of  traffic  and a refusal to be prevented from enjoying that most basic of modern human rights - freedom to travel when, how and where we desire using the infernal combustion engine and its associated mechanology.

Whatever the size of the hole and however important the road, it could most simply be fixed by closing the highway for a few hours and allowing the workmen to do their job while we make alternative arrangements. This may mean staying at home for a change; discovering a more scenic route; considering why we actually drive any way or simply sharing our transport arrangements rather than continuing with our individualistic and private carriages which carry such a toxic premium for our descendants.

Common sense has never accompanied the nation’s locomotive aspirations. Each new mass transport system has been introduced by successive decisions which appease the fast buck rather than slow assurance of getting from A to B at minimum cost to the environment.

Horses, our original power source, were enhanced through track and canal bringing increased speed and loads but retaining that sense of tranquillity and co-existence with our natural environment. Then came the kettle’s curse as Mr. Watt realised that steam could be harnessed as well as horses and these beautiful creatures were eventually reduced to a mere definition of what a kettle on wheels could achieve.

So was born the industrial revolution - and what a revolution it was - as wheels upon wheels turned up and down the land and across the world. Each revolution dependant on fossil fuel, the legacy of our sunken past resurrected to bring in another judgement day.

We got used to steam and even grew to love these mighty engines as they romantically wove across the land knitting distant towns together into the same timeframe. Railways became synonymous with proper time-keeping and stations with the whole range of human emotions in the ‘meeting and greeting’, the ‘letting go’, and the ‘minding of the gap’. Brief encounters were rife and we all know what happened on the Orient Express.

This has been called the golden age of steam - but was it fool’s gold? It tarnished so quickly,  to be replaced by dirty diesel, un-manned and un-romantic stations, or those lonely ‘halts’, and timetables that could be trusted only to the extent that they would succumb to fallen leaves or the wrong kind of snow!

In the swinging sixties, when no-one who was there can remember what they were doing, the government, in its own hallucinogenic fog, reduced the community enhancing network to  model railway levels at a stroke and prepared the ground for the rise of that most potent of status symbols the private motor car. This may not have been so bad but the flood gates were also opened to the juggernaut, the leviathan of our day which shudders at seismic levels through now insomniac villages forcing us to build more motorways and by-passes on which they can wreak even more havoc. Many now carry a rear facing message inviting us to ring a number if they have been driven well. Not many people who have got close enough to read this have survived long enough to make the call!

To conclude. Each generation has to accommodate the technology of its day. Each generation also has to endure changes in technology which appear to herald a brighter future. The problem is that, until now, we haven’t lived long enough to see the effects of these ’improvements’. We are slowly awakening to the reality of what our industrial appetite and individual sense of freedom is doing to our planet, to our lives and to our heritage.

We need to stop, allow the hole to be repaired properly - and take this opportunity to consider what we can do to avoid making even bigger holes into which our children will inevitably fall.

© Graham Oakes.

EASTER GARDEN

The Tomb.

With a finality beyond death, burial removes all trace of existence. Not enough you walked this earth, but you had to be consumed by it – embedded, implanted, sown in this fertile ground.

The Stone.

Heavy with our morbid fear and sealed with all the arrogance of a fallen humanity, it plays its lonely part.

The Garden.

Undisturbed peace. Mankind’s first (and last) resting place. Here, in the arboreal stillness, as leaves respire and sap cools, Nature, sublimely conscious of the Divine, waits, with expectant patience for its most glorious bud to flower.

The Dawn.

Never since its first creation has the sun appeared with greater humility. On this Day a broken body lives again and holy blood pulses triumphantly through once emptied veins. The Son of God rises to still enclosed darkness and the Stone is rolled away. The Shutter opens for a greater Light to shine.

This final barrier does not and cannot resist the truth of Resurrection. Might and meaning; rite and religion; sight and science ... lose their dominance, though not as gladly as the morning star.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Gardener steps into his bower and is welcomed. Creation beams with joy at the presence of perfect Spring and faithful stems bend in the Spirit’s gentle breeze.

At last, a saddened and subdued humanity approaches, still clothed in unredeemable fear. Woman, first cursed by the Fall, is now First Blessed in this Garden as she walks and talks with her God again ... with great joy, she runs to man with the most favoured fruit of everlasting life … disrobed of fear, innocence is no longer ashamed ...

                                     … and, beneath the displaced Stone lies the bruised and bloodied form of a dying serpent …

© 2011 Graham Oakes.

Mynyddislwyn Male Voice Choir 40th Anniversary Concert Blackwood Miners Institute September 23rd 2010

Written following attending their annual concert and pondering on the link between music and our environment.

Hewn from deep and darkened seams

Of rock and crumbling dusty coal.

Tempered like the rolling steel

from furnace fires of the soul.

Music quivers through the air

In the freedom we now share.

Something binds the working hearts

That beat to toil and agony.

Drawn to share their common bond

In tighter frames of harmony.

Music quivers through the air

In the freedom we now share.

Rising, caged, from deathly deep

Hope shines out from wearied eyes.

Beauty leaps from surfaced hours

And finds response in practised lives.

Music quivers through the air

In the freedom we now share.

Cleaner now the valley’s air

Gone the shafts that sucked earth cold.

Decades since have come and gone

Still we hear the sounds of gold.

Music quivers through the air

In the freedom we now share.

(c) 2010 Graham Oakes

The greenwood , flayed

Composed following some recent sermons on Mary and Joseph.

How great the God

we worship here,

Supreme above all things.

Revealed by words,

inspired and true,

the Holy Spirit brings.

Yet see, he chose to come to earth

not as a Warrior-King.

No, born in low humility,

such is the God we sing.

The virgin finds herself with child

and bears much hurt and shame.

Now her betrothed

must hold his thoughts,

as whispered is his name.

“Oh why should this be my reward,

for all the love I gave?”

The answer comes by angel voice,

“This child is born to save!”

So Joseph trusts

God’s strange command

and leaves the Law alone.

He learns to love a child, not his,

and tends him as his own.

Within this family are found

the wounds of love and grace

as God reveals his sovereign plan

to save our human race.

A carpenter

will teach his son

the worth and way of wood;

but this Son learns a harder way

to bring our world to good.

In echo of young Joseph’s cry

hear Jesus’ anguished prayer,

“O Father, why must this be so,

their scorn I should not bear?”

Deep sorrow

hangs upon the Cross,

and nails hold fast the shame.

As Jesus bleeds his mother weeps;

his Father turns away.

Such Horror,

never has earth known,

as Jesus dies for all.

Such Love,

that gives its all for me

before him I must fall.

The greenwood, flayed

and broken down,

is laid to rest in earth;

but like a seed that’s sown in death

it springs to fruitful birth.

How great the God

we worship here,

Supreme above all things;

the child who grew at Joseph’s side

now reigns as King of Kings.