Mark Murphy
Mark A. Murphy was born in 1969 in the UK. His poetry publications include Tin Cat Alley (Spout, 1996), Our Little Bit of Immortality (Erbacce Press, 2011), Night-Watch Man & Muse (Salmon Poetry, 2013), To Nora, A Singer of Sad Songs (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, 2019), and Night Wanderer’s Plea (2019, Waterloo Press). His next two books, Poems: Precepts and Paradoxes and Word Painting are in the pipeline from Cowboy Buddha Press, USA and Eyewear Publishing, UK respectively. His work has been published worldwide in 18 countries in over 200 print magazines and online journals. He is the founder/creator and chief editor of online poetry journal, POETiCA REViEW… www.poeticareview.com
Morning Ontology
Look at the morning sun, how it surprises us
carrying our certainties
in its light, though middle age is upon us.
Your stepdaughter’s death serves its dissuasive gloom,
tearing as it does at the quietude you seek
though now she is lost to you.
Look at the morning sun, when you are bereft
of answers that matter, unreachable, stripped by its vitality.
Open yourself to the nature of existence
though you never asked for life, or the heartache of motherhood.
Sometimes we must reinvent the wheel, every word
that falls short in our story-telling
that we might validate our time upon this earth.
No matter that the fields of youth
are filled with secrets we’d rather not share,
nor that every man carries unmendable darkness in his soul.
Plagues will come and go, the wars will pass
but we will always be blood,
quick to cross swords, to transgress, or digress
like an unwanted guest on the psychoanalyst’s couch.
Wherever we go, we carry the songs
of our loved-ones in our bones;
half four, the sun at its brightest fills the room,
demands meaning.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 