Life and light go well together.
Copyright - A McNaught

Equinox

As the day dimmed
The sun dyed the high
Clouds pink.

I detoured my journey to find a place
Where I could watch the day end
And the night begin
In perfect equipoise.

In the valleys below, dark ribbons of houses
Made a grey waterline against the hills
But a faint mist blurred streetlights
Into fairy lights.

On this September day
Light gave way to night.
For a season, dark will grow
And day will shrink away until the solstice
Turns the pendulum again.

I too have my seasons,
But when I watch and wait
And let the wonder grow,
The light returns,
Whatever month I'm in.

(c) A McN

Strange clay

I have not been myself recently.
Unfortunately, I do not know who I am instead,
But I do not welcome the change.

I am battle weary from resisting temptations,
From attempting a dignity of spirit,
Despite thoughts of which I am ashamed.

I am lonely, from want of intimacy.
Even the intimacy of my own self esteem has gone.
My spirit has dispersed in the wind like my confidence.

There have been times when I am an outsider to myself
Watching what I think and do with a curious detachment,
One step removed from living.

And oh, how I have hungered after You,
Needing to find your realities outside myself
Yet finding it so hard to give you time and space.

And, strangely, needing to find you in the mess
Of introspection and temptation.
Needing to be as free from striving
as I desire to be free from weakness.

So here I am again, shuffling words,
Until they form the shapes of thoughts and feelings.

I have been outside in the dark when the sun died.
I have ridden the wind of a late summer night
And found songs rising from hidden places
Yet still laboured under the melancholies of darkness.

I have listened to the music of those who sing to You with ease,
And remembered that the value is in giving freely,
Not loudly, not confidently,
nor even faithfully at times.

So this is my giving. With gladness and gratefulness
I freely give you emptiness, detachment and temptation’s fire.
It is a strange clay, but you are a strange and skilled potter.

And still I trust.

(c) A McN

Watching the tide rise
Copyright - A McNaught

The galaxies are restless

The galaxies are restless tonight
and the planets are out of orbit.
All the solar systems of my cells are straining at the leash of gravity
to fly apart, disintegrating order. The throb of chaos ripples out from cell to bone to blood to brain.

There are nights like this when peace is a distant world and its memories are dim. Anxieties pepper the night like black stars sucking the light from a daytime sky.

" I have trusted in thy mercy"
and the words are sure.
"my heart shall rejoice"
and the words are strong and strangely true if I should
choose such truth .
The civil war within begins a slow uneasy truce.

The echo in the chaos comes again.
"I have trusted in thy mercy"
It is true.
I have.
I will.
I do.

One by one the dark stars dim
and all the galaxies within
return to ordered orbits once again.

So I will trust
and you will love
as you have always done.

(c) A McN

I have often thought of our own bodies as universes in their own right with constellations of atoms and galaxies of molecules. Insomnia feels like dysfunction on a cosmic scale as each of the systems keep the others awake.

Swallows

Swallows have been in their queues all week.
Summer sun gave way to rain,
storms came,
and then they flew following a favourable wind.

There is a sadness in the empty wires between the poles,
as if the bird's departure stole the warmth away
and brought grey winter
to our gate.

I have wandered this unknown town tonight in rain,
learning its street names, listening to new accents echo
in the empty streets.

I have used imagination like a tool of faith
to see this as an empty nest which you will fill
feathered with new friendships,
lined with love and grace.

Bring summer to this place
as you brought summer to the other nest
which we call home.

Return as seasons circle round the sun;
and may you always find the nest you left a welcome place to be.

We listen eagerly for swallow calls
and watch the evening skies for skimming wings,
yet never make a cage to trap them in.

We hope one day to find more swallows on the wire than left
and know that other nests are fruitful as our own once was
and life is gracious as the gift
was ever meant to be.

(c) A McN

Meeting my eldest boy on his first night in his university town (and carrying all the anxieties a parent ever carries at such times). Five years have passed since then; he has found love, marriage and a community of friendship and faith. Life was gracious as the gift was ever meant to be.

Rendezvous

Long past the midnight hour we ventured out
into the wheeling stardome as the moon slipped off
the sky, sliding to the world beyond the dark horizon.

Then it was only starlight and darkness;
and you and me, tethered together by the cords of love
that only fathers and daughters know.

Like ancient navigators we stood amidst
the swell of landscapes in a sea of wheat where
trees and hedges frothed like dark
white horses on a hidden reef.

We took our bearings from the sky
(heaven always more dependable than earth...).
From star to star, legend to legend we grew;
Cassiopeia to Capella, Perseus to Andromeda;
the great square of Pegasus winged across the south.

As we spoke the wonder watered our imaginations
till they grew like flowers of the night.
The Milky Way defied our counting;
a distant smudge of galaxy defied our sense of time and space.
I knew at once why wolves howl at the moon...

Together we gazed awestruck
at the face of deep infinity, and felt not fear but marvel
at the purpose of our lives.

If ever we be parted from each other
and we long to know each other’s closeness once again,
promise me we’ll rendezvous under Andromeda,
between Pegasus and Perseus at the gates of infinity
where heaven kisses earth and souls ride
winged steeds of love and memory across the speckled sky.

(c) A McN

She was much younger then. We went out to do some work for a Guider's badge and came back with something special etched in memory

Purity
Copyright - A McNaught

Moving on

It has been said that death is
the ship sailing over the horizon.

Sometimes it feels the other way round;
that those we love have finally settled on the shores of time
and with one last gesture
swung the bottle against our bows
to ease us down the slipway
into the ocean of
of our own
history.

Now we are alone,
untied from the bonds that in turn
nurtured us, then needed us.

Now the definitions change
and memory recolours
all the chores, the repeating conversations, the anxieties
of the frail.
And maybe memory will also serve
to resurrect the dimmer days
when life as young and strong as ours
strung days together with a confidence
long gone.

Times and tides roll on;
days will gather distance from the dead
although the maps they gave us
will never cease to set our compasses
and aid our navigations through the night.

And here are we,
nearer by a generation,
to the final shore on which we stake our place of rest;
to launch our children
unguided, unencumbered
on their deep uncharted seas.

(c) A McN

Written for Clive on the death of his father. We did not know how close he was to launching his own children on the deep uncharted seas.

Waterloo bridge

On the bridge near Waterloo
I watched white banners of knitted cloud
Slide over the blue bowl of sky.

The sun was gold as only an autumn afternoon
Can shine and the river was brown with the stir of the mid-tide silt.

People were walking past me, the sound of traffic filled the air
But my ears were full only of the windsong and the tidesong
And the lullaby of lazy waves on bridge piers,

Under that sky the light rang like a bell
Resonating with the light that shines in the back of the mind
When the shadows of thought are stilled and the
Innocent, artless joy of life
Draws wordless prayer from unselfconscious depths.

So I prayed
Without petition or request
And I sang without the need for words
And I etched a milestone of consciousness
In the memory vaults of life.

(c) A McN

Placidity ......
Copyright A McNaught

Solstice

June.

The solstice light
Lending a grey glow
Deep into the night of summer stars.

Arcturus, Vega, Deneb and Altair
Pin the web of constellations on silver nails,
Stringing stories across the sky.
The Milky Way hangs like the faintest streak of cloud.
Nothing is what it seems.

How the air is still, pregnant with scent,
Humming with insect
Vital with life.

You can almost hear the leaves flexing their growth,
Roots snuffling down wormholes,
Fruit ballooning on trees.

Even the moon is bellying through her phases;
The tides easing to fullness,
The world practising beauty
And bounty
For once.

(c) A McN

Hurricane Katrine has passed over New Orleans since writing this. The contrasts between the benevolence of nature and her powerful capriciousness is keenly felt.

Chasing the breeze

If words could ever hope to catch your glory
I'd weave a net with worship,
cast it high from some uncluttered hill
and call you down
to nestle in my concepts...

But as my empty echoes die away on muted ground
I recognise again that, while we live,
you can only be received,
never given, never driven,
never caught and never bought

and you slip through our assumptions
like water through a sieve.

(c) A McN

Summer soars
Copyright - A McNaught