Home

I found home within you.

It took some time 

To realize you’d been there,

All along.

Of course I knew it.

For I always rushed to you

When I was hurting.

I don’t know why you waited.

I think you knew about 

Life’s synchronicity.

You knew what I did not.

And I thank whatever higher power

That I pushed away.

My reasons

My experience

My cognitive process

Until I found home within you.

Quiet

Kind

And still

John H Davies

11th June 2026

If you go away

If you go away 

For quite a while

You’ll be surprised

When you return.

The small things

The smells 

The trinkets

Those memories

You’d lost

Maybe purposefully

Maybe not

But they are there

And they welcome you

As if

They had sat there dormant

But breathing

My wonderful people

John H Davies

19 IV 2026

Ending

Do you have it in you?
Could you call time?

A friend said once
on hearing of a successful attempt
that he was a coward.

Took the easy way out.
If he but knew
the pain you have to feel
to get you to that moment
you would liken him to a lion.

John H Davies

29th March 2026

Cross to bear

We all have a cross to bear.

I can smell the aroma of mine

Damp wood as it struggles to burn

It feels heavy, but not all the time
As if occasionally some memory
Lifts the weight from my shoulder.

And then, without warning, 
Despite the smoke
It weighs down heavily
Digging into my shoulder
(I remember from my Sandhurst days)
Forcing the knees until they buckle

I know what it is now:
I know what to do
I know what it is
I know that if I’m patient it will pass.

But recently, the burden
Has seemed too much
Such that it would be better
To discard that cross
And watch it smoulder by the wayside

Until the rain
And the green
And renewal
And annoyance…

John H Davies
28th March 2026

Here be ghosts

 The ghosts here are kind.

I’m in an old wooden house
Flat packed from Birmingham, England
To Kenya in 1900.

Earlier, as I emptied the bath
I heard voices.

A conversation from beneath the tub,
And I looked hard to see where it was coming from.

Sometimes when I’m sitting
Reading

I feel someone pass along the verandah 
Outside

I don’t mind - I rather welcome
The ghosts

They keep me company
As no other living human
Managed.

John H Davies
28th March 2026

Maasai

I met a stranger
as I sat in the pick-up
surveying unfolding savannah
from an elevated hill.
 
He had materialized from the
fresh and scented earth
dressed in Maasai garb
and approached the car
 
with a stranger’s greeting
I’ve only known
on this continent,
where everyone might need a friend
some day.
 
He was well into his years,
with weather beaten face
exhibiting a dose
of pure integrity,
 
a red shuka
draped in the local way,
tied in with a huge
intimidating panga
swinging from his belt.
 
I was not afraid.
And soon we got to talking
in a cobbled mixture
of English and Swahili
(I cannot speak Maasai).
 
He didn’t know how old he was,
but his eyes betrayed
a careworn fatigue.
 
His family grown up,
departed;
his purpose diminished
and forgotten.
 
So he had returned
to the nomadic life,
the story into which
he’d been created.
 
I reached into the vehicle
to offer him water
and when I turned back,
found him gone,
 
dissolved into the bush
as dark clouds
threatened the sunset.

16th V 2025

Through the looking glass

I gave you some advice last night over the phone.
You were worried your best friend
was being unfair to someone
and wouldn’t change her position.

I suggested your friendship would allow you
to act as a mirror and encourage some introspection.
To examine her position.

This morning
I looked at my face in the mirror
for the first time since childhood.

At some point in my life
I decided I wouldn’t look at myself.
It would be a vain thing to do.

But now I wonder if I was scared of what I might see.

Scared to know how others saw me.
Scared of what was behind those eyes.
Scared to witness the passage of time.

And to be honest
I was OK with what I saw,
the decay
the grey

and I saw my smile
for the first time,
and liked it.

John H Davies
2nd X 2024

Exit strategy

At least twice a month
he’d wake up
wishing he’d never been born.
 
He was used to the feeling,
which had accelerated
with the years
 
especially on reaching
a time of life when
people who’d led
 
ordinary ones were
thinking about retirement
 and settling down.
 
No chance in his case,
his pension stolen,
he’d need to work
 
for several years.
So it would be easier
to end it all,
 
to ease the pain,
the burden,
the responsibility.
 
There were two ways
to accomplish this,
he fantasized:
 
The first to discover
a means to depart
that did not hurt,
 
the other to suddenly
come into money.
So every week
 
he checked the lottery
in the vain hope
his numbers came up.
 
John H Davies
19 VIII 2024