We have put together this dynamic anthology of poesía and prose expressing the profound love of Tom McFerran for his wife, Pauline, who died of brain cancer 11 years ago. All these words have been written by Tom to Pauline, and it is with gratitude for giving The Mindful Word the opportunity to share this love with him, that we have created this column.
Tom McFerran is 81 and resides in Liverpool, England, UK. He now lives alone and spends some of his time watercolour painting and writing poetry. He is interested in the works of Rumi, Hafiz and other Sufi mystics. He subscribes to no particular religion as such, favouring and pursuing the path of Advaita (Non-Duality).
If I were called away
I’d miss the breeze,
I’d miss the golden flowers,
I’d miss the whispers in the trees,
the quiet corners and the rose filled bowers.
I’d miss the sky,
I’d miss the endless summer blue
but most of all my dearest dear
I’d miss you.
by Tom McFerran
Unexpected endings
. . . She flowed on past the temple court
my Lady of the sea,
and tumbled through the forest glades,
winding and wild, and free,
I followed in my frail small boat
alone and unafraid
to meet my sweet Beloved
my fish-tailed ocean maid,
though I a simple fisher-man
no use for fame and stealth,
the owner of a golden dream
unlimited great wealth,
my gold the noon-day sunlight
my silver, Sister Moon,
my vista grassy lake-lands,
and the wailing Common Loon,
my heart-beat paced a rhythm
like on a tight skinned drum
as I rushed along the river
she faintly calling me “come”
then when I reached our rendezvous
my Lady wasn’t there
I waited through the rain and heat
and wondered where, O where
was she my true beloved,
my cheeks were wet with tears,
I waited for a day, a week,
I waited down the years,
and I grew old still waiting
the darling of my heart,
I knew our love was love-locked,
that we would never part,
but nothing lasts forever,
all things will fade away,
but Love and my Beloved
are in my heart to stay.
by Tommy McFerran
Pauline, my love.
Who knows, who knows what, who God is, what, where that which we are, the Self, abides?
As for me I can only say “I don’t know”, it is as it is. It was whilst the moments, hours, weeks and months dragged by relentlessly I wondered how such a strange thing it is that we can penetrate into each other’s core through the eyes, the gaze merges and blends in that place of sacred unity where there is a sense of ‘being’ each other. Two forms as one and a certain knowing that not one thing is separate from the other; it is as it were we are the gaze itself.
Why
And then I watched your eyes,
your sad and leaving eyes,
my pleadings for a why,
my plaintive silent cry,
whatever will become of us, you said.
And then I heard your voice,
your broken lonely voice,
and I could hear you say
to pass along the way
we must be very, very brave, you said.
… and then you left,
whilst I remain
gazing, beyond the dream.
Loving you always, across the ends of time.
by Tom McFerran
My rose
My rose,
her stain of rosy red bled from her petals,
it was said her perfume lingered just as sweet
by other names laid at her feet,
then leaked the attar from her heart
into the mystery, pieced by this lover’s dart.
My bloom,
her colour now is gone
her lovely form became undone,
my rose, that one of many things ceased then to be
and yet her essence sings
of lovely days and nights of bliss
when I came running for her kiss.
by Tom McFerran.
Dear, dearest Pauline.
You never fail to amaze me with the things you show me, and although I cannot see you physically, I know for a certainty now that somehow, in some incredibly seeming way, it’s you that shows me when I am struggling for an answer to a particular problem, a word in a poem, or when an obstacle presents itself that is besetting me.
At the time, this following incident really had me at my wit’s end and wondering how in the name of all that is good and kind you did this – to all intents and purposes it was impossible; but eventually we come to realise that things are not always as they seem. However, I recorded the incident and kept it with others as yet another example, another signal that you are still here, and that you are everywhere and everything at precisely the same instant, I have come to know that in the placeless place where we really live, time and distance do not exist.
So anyway Pauline, as a reminder to myself and as an explanation and a wake-up call to whomsoever may be interested enough to read what I am trying to say, here is the incident as I wrote it at the time.
The butterfly
“One morning on a lovely sunny day during the late springtime after Pauline (my wife) died on the previous December the 23rd, I was in my back yard casually hanging out my laundry on the wash line when suddenly, not from across the yard but directly out of the sky above, a large brown and yellow butterfly descended and landed on my left shoulder. It looked so beautiful having settled there and not wishing to frighten it away I kept perfectly still with my arms stretched out, one hand holding a pair of jeans and the other holding a clothes peg. The butterfly just sat there on my shoulder for a while, then it turned itself to face me and began opening and closing its wings, it stayed for maybe two or three minutes and then it flew off straight up into the sky – exactly the way it had come.
As it transpires, I had become very friendly with a young single mother named Judy who had been abandoned by her partner. Judy had very recently lost her only child, a seven year old little girl named Sophie to a very rapid form of leukaemia. As can be imagined and expected, Judy was totally devastated. I formed a relationship with this young lady and we became good friends. A day or two after my experience with the butterfly, Judy’s friend had called on her and asked if she would care to go with her to visit a clairvoyant lady. At first Judy did not wish to go, saying she wanted no involvement with such people but eventually she succumbed and went with her. The morning after her visit, Judy telephoned me saying that she had visited a clairvoyant lady with her friend and the clairvoyant lady had said she had a very important message for her to pass on to someone she knew. Here is what the clairvoyant lady said to Judy . . .
“Judy, you have recently found a new friend. He is a very much older man who has white hair, his wife passed over as a result of brain cancer last Christmastide, the next time you see your friend or telephone him will you please tell him the following, tell him it is a message that I have received from the other side . . .
and here is the message . . .
“Tom, the butterfly that landed on your shoulder when you were in our back yard hanging out your clothes was me, Pauline.””
*
Pauline, thank you for the visit, and thank you for showing me things that are beyond belief.
Tom.
Dear Pauline.
For the past couple of days I have been going to write to you but couldn’t face the memories, so I suppressed them, and now I don’t know yet if I can continue to write this letter today as I intended to do, already the page is spotted wet with tears and I have only just begun to put pen to paper, it’s not so much that I am sorrowful or saddened, it’s just because thoughts of you are turning into liquid as they appear and overflowing my cheeks, anyway, do you recall those days we spent at the beach together amongst the sedge and the sandhills, just we two alone in the early dawn before anyone else came by to disturb the stillness, just the gulls and sandpipers, we cuddled so close we seemed to vanish into each other, not knowing who was what, oblivious of all else but our two entwined bodies, how we laughed when we said silly things to each other like “Whose leg is this, yours or mine,” and then in the evening twilight walking away from the silence, from the barefoot warmth of the sand back to the asphalt and concrete artificiality of down town city-life.
So, my love, even though we are not enveloped in the salt-sea air, I’ve made another little poem for you, I hope you like it…
“I watched the waves today,
I saw them come,
I saw them folding back into the ocean,
I watched them rise today,
surging, heaving, roaring, then calmly sinking back into
the ocean.
I saw you there, there at the beach today
inside the sunlight,
in the reflection flickering bright
upon the ocean,
I saw you, never ending you, ever always you,
the ocean.
I walked along the beach today,
looked around and saw you
in the salt white driftwood, in every tiny grain of sand,
in the ribbon strips of seaweed out there upon the strand,
in bleached beached sea shells cast up from out
the ocean.
You filled my eyes today, your chaste perfection,
where’re I cast my eye I saw you,
my source of wonder and of awe,
the deepest depths of all I saw
today and every other day, so bountiful, so beautiful,
the ocean.”
…and strange it is, is it not, that Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.”
Pauline, my heart, I will always love you, and I will never forget you.
–Tom McFerran
Because I loved her so
When she was young
and in the virgin blush of maidenhood
she only had to touch her ebon hair
or bare the nape of her pale neck
and I could reach my fingers through the stars
because I loved her so,
. . . and then, when lying on her sickness bed
and facing that which must needs come
she only had to smile
and look at me with her long-lashed lingering eyes
and I could soar beyond the blueness of the skies,
because I loved her so.
by Tom McFerran
Her hands
Her hands, I held
as I would hold the petals of a dying rose
afraid that they would vanish into dust,
so pale, so fragile tissue thin her skin
which served to hide
that silent unrelenting foe
that stole away our happiness.
Once was a time
when I would watch her happy fingers
with crimson painted nails
create from single flowers a work of art,
and then
just give it to a friend who happened by,
on impulse
as a gift of love.
by Tom McFerran
Behind my eyes
There is an ache behind my eyes
just for one fleeting glimpse of her.
If it were mine to own
the lustre of a thousand rubies red,
a diamond cluster bright
as a sparkling mountain stream,
if all my days were filled with sapphire skies
and fields of emerald green,
and if these tears upon my cheeks
were droplets made of pearls
none could take away
the ache behind my eyes
just for one fleeting glimpse of her.
by Tom McFerran
Pauline, my love.
I was sitting thinking this morning of the day some eleven years ago (seems just like weeks away) when you said to me … when you caught me crying … “Tom, don’t cry, no matter what happens, I will not leave you. How can I, where can I go, Tom? There’s nowhere to go but here. For the present though, to reach across today, we must be very, very brave.”
How time has flown and how your words have stayed with me and sustained me over these years without you. Sometimes though dear love, I feel so alone, even though it is as it were you are by my side and inside me always, at times I feel your presence so intimately; how could it not be so, for the essence that is you is the same essence that is me. There is only one essence and we both are that, all things are that.
It was so hard at first to accept that you were for ever physically absent, but I have come to accept the situation. And yet, I still miss you beyond imagination, so much so that I started in my feeble way, and with an inept ability to write poems about and to you (I have always hoped that you liked them when you read them.) which would make my efforts worthwhile.
“In the twilight
in this lamp lit grove,
summer,
the smell of musk and closeness,
entwined limbs.
mingled breath,
and in a drawn out kiss we merged into each other.
And now this evening, now you have gone
. . . and reading by moonlight
the book of you,
I read about the pain between the lines
on your lovely leaving face
and then I wept”
Soon I will write again, till then dear heart.
by Tom McFerran
Pauline, look
It is so strange,
this my loving you when you aren’t here,
this lingering lasting presence,
returning, again and yet again,
this feeling you are here.
Yesterday I walked along the beach
gathering driftwood, pieces of dreams,
sea gull feathers and sea shells for your Ikebana arrangements,
out on the horizon on the edges of the sea
someone hailing me,
. . . “She is not there to give them to,”
and yet, when I saw the great heron
fishing in the shallows
again I forgot
that you aren’t here,
I cried aloud as I am wont to do
. . . “Pauline, Pauline look!”
and then I knew, somehow I knew,
that you were here
and that you’d already looked.
by Tom McFerran
Suddenly
Without reasons, causes, preconceived ideas
softly you tip-toed into me
entering every corner of my heart,
you touched me, intimately,
suddenly,
I knew that we never were apart.
Sweetly, quietly,
in the deep silence something stirred,
uncoiled,
unwrapped itself from sleep,
expanded, exploded,
burst through the shackles which enclosed my heart,
suddenly,
I knew that as one bird we both could fly.
by Tom McFerran
Your leaving eyes
It rained last night
and all the fields were wet with tears,
there’s an old oak in the forest glen
I visit every now and then
even he looked sad today
something told him you must go upon your journey,
that you would slip away.
. . . now, in this twilit hour,
with streaks of purple, red and yellow in the sky
I wondered why
in that half-light of day
you left, without a kiss good-bye,
. . . but, in your leaving eyes
a faintly flickering smile,
and all around the darkening eaves
drifting summer sunlit leaves,
across the meadow wind-blown flowers,
magic moments, memories, all my ivory towers,
behind it all that which you really are,
no fear, no dread,
there’s no such thing as being dead.
by Tom McFerran
