Tuesday, July 26, 2005

GNER to Edinburgh

On a day devoid of light I travelled north.
Under the leaden sky all sense of direction failed.
The flavour of the passing hours was bland without the
sun's round journey texturing the changing light.

I worked as an effort of will to ensure the hours were not without their fruitfulness
But all was grey, thought mechanical; consciousness dull.
One by one I wrung the words from my brain and laboriously strung them across the screen.
The letters hung from the line like limp washing on a still day.

I sipped coffee in the hope that it would quicken my blood
and stimulate my brain but the synapses were damp as the drizzling mist
and the sparks of thought fizzed with a faint hiss as the waves of intention
struggled to propogate their motion.

Then the view abruptly changed.
The misty shrouded land fell down to sea.
Long curls of swell crawled slowly on a sea of dull mercury..
Ribs of rocks spiked the water's skin and the mist steamed grey.

I saw the lonely desolation of the scene and in an instant I was caught.
Something deep stirred despite dull journey stupor,
some vestige of spirit leapt from me, clinging like a limpet to the scene.
Silently I called back across the opening acres as the train sped on.
There was no reply.

Still that piece of me is missing.
Like a broken parent grieving for a runaway child
I grieve for the neglected needs of my spirit,
the solitudes untaken,
the silences uncherished
the beauties unnurtured.

And even now
As I lie in a strange bed in an empty room
I sense the distant hauntings of my own spirit
Walking on the waters where the dark cliffs rise
And the tide shoulders against the night shore.
Walking where the fish scales flicker;
Silver lanterns of the luminescent moon.

(c) A McN

Cycling to conference

Although my heart burned,
my gulped breaths seemed inadequate for my needs
and only a steel will kept the legs pumping
I was happy (in a funny kind of way).

Maybe it was the perverse stubborness
that wanted to do it differently,
defying convention,
shunning the easy options.

Or maybe it was the pitiful desire to be noticed
the inner child's attention seeking ploys;
the collected artefacts with which to start a conversation.

And - in part no doubt - it was.
But believe me also when I say I was a warrior that night.
I took on gravity with gritted teeth and heaving chest.
I raided oxygen from the evening's still, unguarded air and
Fuellled hot muscle with it's potency.

But I was a poet too, singing on the long freewheels,
leaning into curves with a whoop of praise
As the mind's calculations adjusted
Speed and angle and friction on the road;
No longer sums but
As if they were a set of songs,
not sums.

I have yet to mention the mental gymnastics
of the map, matching and measuring the mind's eye against the bold body of the land,
or the heart's delight in the curves of the hills beautiful as any woman's form.

The sheep called me as I passed,
quizzical faces aligned along magnetic fields of curiousity, turning as one.
The last of the skylarks descended on a song and the blackbird scolded his echo in the silent wood.

In the west light metamorphosed to night through a hundred shades of gold
and the sun flung fine-fingered rays on the cotton canvas of the clouds.

Maybe the man in me had many motives for the ride,
but the animal beneath was pure;
dumb in wonder,
deep in pleasure,
innocent and artless as the evening air.


(c) A McN

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Watching ghosts

I came here
just to watch the ghosts play.
In this grey autumnal rain.
I can almost see your movement
in the mist.

You were smaller then
and I was larger to you all
in every way.

We walked here often.
One, perhaps, would hold my hand
another on a trike,
others running on ahead.
Everywhere we went
we were a crowd.

We spoke, we watched;
we wandered in the lands
of nonsense and imagination.
There were always leaves to kick
or puddles to splash
or tales of school to tell.

Now I am here alone.
Leaves lie unkicked.
The rain plays rhythms on the metal roof,
the windscreen mists with breath.
Waterdrops meander down the glass, tears for a lost world.

Now I am smaller in your lives
and missing all the intimacy
fatherhood once brought.

I am lonely,
watching small ghosts playing
in the dim light;
wishing I could join them for a while.

(c) A McN



Curiosity
Copyright - A McNaught

The growing

Wind skimmed, cold and thin
under grey sky.
We didn't ask you to
but you came too.

We played in the glade
where trees twist and grow,
wringing substance from the empty air.
And you were there.

Night grew, dead sun strew
its embers on the shining sea
and you were there though
unbeknown to me.

Now at last you have cast
your lot and from your deep
and inner world of night
you are begotten and now grow
like green and tender grass

grasping for light.

(c) A McN

An unexpected pregnancy. What a gift she has turned out to be.

Selenity

Do you mock me? Or inspire me -
cool moonblue light that shines from high above the broken cloud?

I envy your serenity.

You neither know nor care
for all the woes within the world,
for all the anxious thoughts and
broken hearts.

You glide untroubled through the velvet night
a world apart.

(c) A McN

Moon rise over the church on the pyramid, Cholula, Mexico.
Copyright - A McNaught

Still evening

The hills are silent.
I am silent; save the pulse of life within me.

The mist that tumbles twisting down the hills
sedates the wind.

Only the sheep and crows forego
the holy silence.

I think they know
the hills are far from sacred
and the weather is lying.

(c) A McN

The weather is lying..
Copyright - A McNaught

Innocence

How long I stood in awe of you
little bundle;
as if your solemn peacefulness and steady eyes
could penetrate disguise and know
the imperfections masked below.

You looked at me with such intent
little bundle;
as if your newborn thoughts were weighing every phrase
and your unflinching gaze inferred
the motives behind every word.

Your holiness unsettles me
little bundle;
I too was holy once in milk's white purity
until the subtle tree of knowing cast its shadow on my growing.

(c) A McN


Friday, July 15, 2005

Offering


St Swithun's is a small country church, entirely surrounded by Chalk streams. I went to a service once but mostly I've been to watch, listen and pray.

The day you left

On the day you left
I walked the woods to shake the numbness from my bones.
The air sang with a north west wind. Each leaf shone with a rim of rain; sprinkling silver showers with every shift of wind.


It was very much alive and the sun,
Despite the distances of space,
Embraced us with a kiss.

I watched her handiwork unfold;
Each tree the offspring of a thousand love affairs with light.
And underneath, the bluebells washing tides of fragrance on the forest floor.

Such alchemy of light,such sleight of hand,
stealing the substance of the land
To birth a beauty far beyond the dull imagination
of the naked ground.

And when she shone on you that dawn,
flame and brightness caught your hair;
shafts of gold took hold and drew you lightwards
like a shoot departing company of soil.

But still your roots are long and strong and intertwined among our own.
And we will honour you in simple ways; by nurturing the roots of memory,
by living lives more fully than we might,
and in the darkness, always,
seek (and savour)
light.

(C) A McN

A friend's child dies unexpectedly. No explanations make sense and yet their world - though shattered - was far from ended. Life and death are intimately linked. I remember another bereaved parent telling me that after the grief had subsided they came to feel felt they now had one foot in heaven.

Thistledown

A white light bleaching the landscape colours, shimmering the distant haze with heat.
Grass crackles underfoot, rasping like straw and the cool dark sombreros of the trees are
limp leaved in the oven breath of summer.

Then I saw deep drifts of thistledown, a candyfloss as light as snow with
crystal geometries as delicate and fine .

I fling soft fistfuls to the warm receptive air. Each spidered seed weaves stiches
round the contours of the wind. The liquid air reforms behind the tumbling path.

I cannot help but be a child again, stretching to pluck the silver spheres from empty air, chasing the feathered dreams of future fruitfulness.

In a summer season let
the gracious breath of God blow warm
and gentle on my dry and brittle soul.

Animate the insubstantial lightness of my faith
that though my roots on earth may never hold me firm
I might yet trust the hidden urgings of the air to lead me on.

(c) A McN


A short walk squeezed into a busy day and the mind in overdrive. It is as if I scarcely live but only grasp at straws of meaning on time's treadmill. Then something awakens the child within and time is elastic, experience vital, life reborn.

Rain after midnight

The house an island of stillness
looming large above the strandline of deserted streets,
blind windows sleeping in the holy silences of night.

Rain begins softly, gently,
Distillate of starless sky;
Sprinkled benediction from the whispering clouds
Kyrie eleison

I am washed and made clean,
I am lulled by the rhythms in the darkness.
Christe eleison

While the grey world sleeps
I am restored;
One by one I shed my skins
Until the inner creature shadows the threshold,

Man-beast
(body echoes to the pulse of rain)
And man-spirit (soul singing in the empty air).

Kyrie Elyson

(c) A McN


We are losing touch with the rhythms around us. The ancient liturgies were rhythms of reflection and contained in themselves rhythms and metres of great beauty.
Kyrie eleison - God have mercy

Christe eleison - Christ have mercy
Kyrie eleison - God have mercy.
The rain brings its own rhythms and its own midnight mercies to the unsleeping.

Fire drums


Kids Club Camp - July 05.
Charlie plays the stick drums to accompany Ken's strumming on the guitar. The stars are just coming out. Overhead the Summer Triangle slowly emerges as Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila condense from the heat haze.


It wasn't a long sleep that night but it was memorable and the owls were quiet (despite the larks starting at 3.57 am).