First Sunday of Advent, a late afternoon walk.
After a month of stillness, the air is thick,
filled with the raucous call of avian chatter.
The reason for their talk, the cause of all this conversation? Could it be that the birds
also anticipate the birth of Christ, God’s Son?
We walk on by, hearts lifted by their song.
The bird song this evening was noticeably louder.
(29.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Jon Sailer on Unsplash
Three biros, two with lids,
A tarnished 50 pence
Two 2ps and a 1 gone dull,
A plastic gun now bent.
An sticky old sweet wrapper,
A broken lolly stick,
Token from a forgotten game,
A dusty paperclip.
A tired toothless comb,
Illegible receipt,
A Panini football sticker,
Now ripped without its feet.
A family history and
Memories of the past,
A record of their years,
Found down old sofa arms.
I spent the morning dismantling our old sofas too take them to the ‘dump’. The amount that came out from inside them was astonishing!
(29.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Naomi Hébert on Unsplash
The Duke takes to the stage,
Two suits and greying dreadlocks,
In hobo-chic and whimsy.
He owns it, we are his.
Beside him Chip, sidekick
In gramophone adventures,
An ever growing assembly
Of percussive curios.
Stumpf fiddles & 78’s,
Together weaving dreams,
They lead us through forgotten
And delicate shades of rhythm.
And as the applause begins
To fade, we find ourselves
Returned enriched, released,
We find, by a poet’s vision.
Thursday night we spent the evening in the company of the wonderful Duke Special and ‘Temperance Society’ Chip Bailey in an intimate gig in Colours, Hoxton. What a night.
(28.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Thursday morning at eleven o’clock. The cars
all have their automatic headlights on
to lift the lethargy. It does not work.
A pensive mood infects the air and even
the sun is tentative. It seems afraid,
a fearful suitor, reluctant to commit.
Before too long the hopeful Christmas lights
will shine, and maybe that will lift our eyes,
but for now, like Simeon, we’re forced to wait
and wonder if the Son will ever rise.
Walking home this morning I was struck by the car lights…
(27.11.25)
Drafting grant applications,
I find I’m spewing word,
after word, after word, until
the screen is full of letters.
They blur into a splurge
of unattractive text,
a monolith of blackness.
I need to slash the text,
reduce the count and find
a way to make it more
succinct, engaging. I wonder,
should I try poetry
instead of prose? Or should
I go full Bob and simply
scrawl, ‘GIVE US YER MONEY!’
Following on from yesterday’s poem, on top of seasonal activity, I’m also writing grant applications for our church redevelopment project.
(26.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash
So many tasks and services,
completing them is a constant doubt,
I’m caught between an anguished shriek,
and a merry dance and joyful shout.
And yet I love this time of year,
I love the reason for its cheer,
the coming birth of Jesus Christ,
Immanuel, God’s Son with us.
His birth that night in Bethlehem,
to a teenage mum and carpenter dad,
accompanied by the angels and
glad shepherds who to the manger ran.
What is the reason for their rush?
That Christ had come for the likes of us,
no, not just kings but everyone,
Love lifting us to the Holy One.
I’ll take a breath and dive on in,
I’ll give my all to follow him,
what else is there for me to do,
for him who lived for me and you?
And so I lift my voice and sing,
One month to go! One month for Him!
Whilst working tonight on grant applications for our church redevelopment project and various Christmas preparations, I noticed the date. Perhaps the rhyme makes it a bit twee, but cut me some slack, with one month to go, there’s a lot on my plate!
(25.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Árni Svanur Daníelsson on Unsplash
Filling in the blnks,
Personalising the crwd,
Identfyng objects
Hgh in the gathering clouds.
Forevr seeking patterns,
Our brains instinctivly,
Fill in all the gaps, to mke
Snse of what they see.
This is our superpowr,
Our mnd’s great party trck,
Unless there’s no connecton,
And then we come unstck.
All that said, I’ve never been good at the missing vowels round in Only Connect…
(24.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
‘I’m going to ABBA tomorrow’, he said
Fantastic, I replied. I’d heard
so many good things about the show,
and how the holograms seemed so real.
Not having seen the gig myself,
and wanting to add to the conversation,
I started to talk about a show
that I’d just seen the night before.
I saw a jolt upon his face,
a mental change of gear, but ever
composed and mindful of the other,
he quickly engaged with what I’d said.
Realising, perhaps, that I had moved
too quickly from his coming joy,
I returned the conversation to
our quartet of Seventies songsters.
His features creased a merry crease,
‘I must have miscommunicated,
I didn’t mean the sequinned Swedes,
but Aber as in Aberystwyth!
The moral of this mutual blunder?
The danger of assuming shared
perception, a common understanding,
obvious isn’t always so.
A comic conversation from this morning that makes a perfect illustration.
(23.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Andrew Ebrahim on Unsplash
At the play tonight
Gandalf sat down behind me
And magic happened
Went to see the fantastic Nicola Walker tonight in The Unbelievers. Ian McKellen was also in the audience.
(22.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
The preacher’s task is wrapped in mystery.
At first it seems straight forward, simple, but
On this familiarity there falls
A veil that covers what was clear before.
Then we are left to wrestle for the heart,
To twist and turn until we’re spinning, lost
Under the many layers of meaning,
And there we’re called to stay until we’re found.
Sometimes epiphany is hard to win.
We fight into the night and drag it out,
With courage bravely born of hope, refusing
To settle for another easy road.
At other times we turn to write but even
Before the pen is in our hands, the words
Become alive, a pulse that drives them fast,
A living stream that flows out of the book.
I’ve spent the decades preaching, and even now I find it an exciting yet elusive art.
(21.11.25)
© Ben Quant 2025
Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash
Ode for the Day 