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About the poet
Colin Knowles was born in Sydney in 1944 and grew up in suburban Melbourne. He started his working life as a civil engineer in Australia before spending 3 years in Canada as a project manager. On his return to Australia, Colin continued to work in the property and building industries as a management consultant on large, complex projects in many locations including Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and China.
Knowles has been writing poems from his life experiences since the early 1960’s; short poems, longer poems, love poems and deeper poems. He finds expressing himself in poetry as the easiest way to discuss an idea, thought, concept or personal understanding. He uses many styles writing in a spare, understandable way.
Reflections on Life is his first published poetry collection.
The Search
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Hell
In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and eén to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death. ……
We all search
In our many ways
For reason and meaning in our lives
And
For you, life has been like wandering
Lost in a gloomy wood
Unable to find the path direct.
So turning your back
On this earlier life
You leave your home
Behind you and
Begin your search.
You have found a car park
And you walk with the crowds of shoppers through the department store
Packed with things you don’t really need
To the mall.
Past the sharp, tight, painted ladies grimacing with charm
Selling the latest personal self-decoration fads
At ridiculous prices.
In the mall, you pause,
Where do you look in this place for meaning?
The cinema complex (or dream factory)?
The food court?
The fashion clothing shops?
The key cutter, the phone case vendor, the person sweeping the floors?
The supermarket, the bookshop (a possibility), the handbag shop?
Surrounded by the noisy, bustling, intent throng
In the muzaked space
You see that the whole place is about creating expectations
And offering the dream of satisfaction.
The only meaning here is unrestrained desire
For the next and the new.
You turn
Walk through the department store
Past the painted ladies
To the crowded, desperate car park
And away.
In the church,
Under the high arched ceiling,
The coloured light
Streaming through the stained glass
Of saints images
Lights up in chiaroscuro
The man nailed to the timber cross.
The practicing organ music fills the space.
Subtle impressions of your youth
Surround you
With rote dogma and the possibility of hope.
Space shivers and blurs.
The nailed man is looking at you.
So you ask him
I am on a quest to know, so
Who are you?
I am a Jewish man from a Jewish world
Who lived a long time ago
Adopting an inner attitude of surrender and openness
To address the chaos of man and his world
Teaching respect and compassion
Killed by men
And then made God by man
And, mysteriously,
God’s son also
You then ask
If we made you God,
What or who is God?
God is one of man’s greatest creations.
God is the ultimate being.
God is all powerful and all knowing.
God created all things
Visible and invisible.
God is active.
God is love.
God is whatever you don’t
