3 Poems

by Andrew Thornton-Norris (June 2019)

Jeffrey’s Cave, Cy Gavin, 2015

 

When I See
 

When I see the sadness of my child

I am reminded of the sadness of

My parents when I was a child and when

The current heats the circuit from my heart

 

Up to my eyes and then I hear the gulls

And taste the sea I am reminded of

The sadness that is mine all on my own

That led me to eternal joy and peace

 

 

The Jack Pine, Tom Thomson, 1916-17
 

Autumn

 

In this the autumn of our days as sleep

Exhausts us more and more and fields that fade

Away in light that shines within our hearts

Throughout the endless night that is our day

 

As days and nights draw in among us we

Become more like as one together now

The silhouettes of trees against the mists

Are faces of the ones we love nearby

 

The cars and trucks roll on throughout the night

Remembering that not all sleep like us

The hands turn on and on around the clock

 

In imitation of the spheres so high

As blessed ones in contemplation see

The sight that satisfies eternally

Reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus, Henri-Lucien Doucet
 

Odysseus

 
O thou who calls me back to thee I will

Return upon the calling of the wood

At twilight on a summer’s eve and in

The drear light of dawn that breaks into

 

The comfort of a winter’s home at morn

In light and dark it is your love that calls

Me back again from distant wandering

Just like the cuckoo calling back the spring

 

When love himself is with me, what more do

I need, in pouring rain in city streets

Or summer lanes? But when he leaves me, or

I him, I am need of everything.
 

 

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Andrew Thornton-Norris is the author of The Spiritual History of English, described by The London Times as “an enjoyable, erudite and cohesive journey through the history and philosophy of English literature in 150 pithily written pages.” He is also an accomplished poet, described by the University Bookman as “refreshingly direct, in contrast to contemporary poets whose poems are like hearing half of a telephone conversation in their elusive allusions, or the poems that are really fragments of prose surrounded by ellipses…[his are] like a Renaissance painting of the Crucifixion falling off a museum wall onto a viewer.” His website is at www.thornton-norris.com.

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