What is love?

As a young academic who was learning his craft
I was once assigned a near-impossible task
My superior knew it, though they wore a stoic mask
As they asked me to define with only a hint of a laugh:

What is love?

Now the humour here is clearly twofold
Baby don't hurt me, but I believe it's a lyric of old
But also, well, what am I meant to write?
This answer eludes academics all day and night

See, there is not an atom of love we've yet detected
It does not seem a disease, though you can be infected
The force of love can be felt but not measured
Love can break in a second or spend decades unweathered

We can claim it's simply a biological drive
Love only exists as a means to survive
Or chemically find oxytocin vasopressin the brain
But to claim this is love would be slightly insane

So, what then?

Well, I feel that, as an academic, love is best served
By acknowledging that its effects can be simply observed
But not just by recording attraction and affection
Instead more broadly defining it by a connection

As more than just lust and acting passionately
Love is what allows people to act irrationally
To love is to sacrifice, for once the seeds are sown
Love allows you to put another's needs before your own 

It is what makes us do the washing up, even when we tire
Love is second jobs and letting old interests expire
Love is making a fool of yourself to get a smile from someone "feeling fine"
Love is being willing to put every aspect of yourself on the line 

What is love?

I returned to my superior with these odd results to present
Love is weird to observe, it doesn't often make sense
Love could be smaller than atoms but it's a force like no other
Love is when you would lay down your life for another

***

Inspiration - John 15v13: No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life

Euros 2024

it is what it means to care
to believe with all your heart
though at times you may be broken
it is better still to start

it is easy to be cynical
to hate with a heart of stone
you will still hear us faithful whisper
that one day, it will come home

***

Written on the evening of another England Men's team loss

Confidence

Do you want to know one of the odder life lessons I've learned?
It's that confidence is a really useful trait
That ability to convince yourself of your own abilities
It helps you to achieve beyond anything else

But, well, also it's good to be able to recognise it
To see the tell-tale signs of a confident human
It allows me to appreciate this admirable trait
But also, well, helps me make sure I don't confuse it for something else

The loudest person in a room is rarely the wisest
The most loyal is not always the first to shake hands
Intelligence can take so many forms
Talents do not always reveal themselves to the holder

It is one of the most beautiful things in life
When someone who isn't confident feels emboldened
A hesitant trust in the circumstances before them
A new step that is not taken lightly

So be confident! If you can.
You might well be stronger than you think
Just remember confidence is powerful.
And power can be used in many ways.

So if you are blessed with confidence
Be confident in others. Share your gift

The World Below

Beneath this place of grass and stone
Beneath the field, beneath the home
There lies a world we never see
An infusion of geology and history 

Deep deep down and then some more
There lies a molten magma core
Rocks and dirt and then some soil
Surely too deep down for us to spoil?

Sadly our reach is further than we think
There's no depths to which we cannot sink
We all create waste in many places
Taken away on a weekly basis

Taken where? where did it go?
Be honest now, do you know?
Dumped somewhere that barely shows
To slowly, quickly, decompose

Gases will rise, liquids go down
The stones beneath us start to drown
Those waterways that irrigate our crops?
Pollution does not make it stop

Combine with pits and pipes and quarry
It forms a tale to make us worry
Of the scale of human wastage on repeat
For those brave enough to look beneath our feet

***

Written at a St Nick's Environmental workshop focussing on waste 

Wilderness

the wilderness is wild

untamed, like a child

but similar to the young

there's much it can become

you can tame it in a way

form tomorrow from today

just be careful, as you do

not to turn the wilderness into you

***

A 100-second poem, written at a St Nick's Environmental workshop