Selected poems
Do you see what I see?
Do you see what I see?
Tales as thin as milk-skintaller than the night.
A mother bares her childto sky, to star,blessings on our foreheadsa cross to scar our backs.
Holy water falls,with textures of song & suffering,
a prayer to rinse our mouths in,a room to box our sins.
Somewhere in the distancea tomb breaks open,
we remain a voice,to the past & all its failures.
Buried in our conscienceexecuted on our knees,
the flow of blood runs deepon scriptures old and new.
Blessed lips pursed skywardand down on flinty ground,
do you see what I see?those lice on holy spine.
— Ellen Shelley
Subverting your world with a handful of stories
The telling of stories is at the heart of making a new worldthey have inherent within them seeds of many possible futuresthat take root in the most rocky of soilsand surprising places of uncertaintycreating strongly blooming imaginations that have decided to live for ever
— John Cranmer
Words and wingsWords are our climbing anchorswe bury them deepinto the rock-faceof every living momentWord by wordlifting our heavinesstowards a possible summitThere to find the onewho has grown wingsand is moving ontowards an horizonhidden in the cloud-hazeof what might yet be.
— John Cranmer