On the bridge

I found you on the bridge in the midst of a city, in a stream of crowds,
but statue-still, looking out over the water
crying.

I had only stopped to take a photo of the view
but suddenly we were together
apart from the crowd;
parallel lives looking out on parallel views
yet a world apart.

I was awkward,
the humanity of compassion made me want to know you,
to comfort you or reassure,
yet we were strangers and you were vulnerable,
alone even in the crowds.

I owed you the dignity of private grief
yet I also owed the blessing of a kind and timely word.

The words we swapped were very few.
You reassured me that you would not jump.
I reassured you that life was bigger than it felt today
and I asked your name that I might pray with meaning
to a God who counts in ones.

I left you, with the lightest touch of hand upon your shoulder.
"I'll be thinking of you" I said and turned away
deep sighs of prayer rising like bubbles in a well
yet inwardly I grieved at my inability to really tell you what I knew;
the clumsy shallowness and guardedness shyness
of my words.

Five minutes later and a mile away I stopped my bike.
I would write a note instead and cycle back to where you were.
I am better with ink than spoken talk
and soon a message formed beneath the pen
and I set off to you again.

But these were many minutes gone and I suspected you
like the footsteps of the clock, would also have moved on.
Though strangely, it seemed to me,
between the looking and the finding,
the looking was the more important of the two -
a kind of prayer made tangible by time.

I never found you. I put my note in a telephone box
Someday someone with your name may open it and be blessed.
A chance in a million that it might be you.

But even if it never is, remember this...
A stranger came to look for you, Rebecca,
and love was in the looking.

This is God's parable to you.

Don't hide away.

(c) A McN

Sound of freedoms

The sea was anxious;

waves jumped and jostled; crowded fretfully
before a cold east wind that streamed with unseemly haste.

The tide being low
I walked across the foreshore,
stepping through the tangled seaweed braids and
round the pits and pools bait digging left behind.

Then I was there,
standing at the water's edge,
offering the kayak to the waves running thin
across the shallow ledge of low tide strand.

A push, a shove and (scraping momentarily)
we enter in another world.

Deeper water shoulders against me;
Waves rise from nowhere, scoop me forwards
slide under me, spill themselves around me.
The east wind whistles through metallic teeth
and the sea smell is sharp and raw
at the back of my nostrils.

In and out the paddle plunges,
knifing the deep green ocean's wave-wriggled flesh,
and leaving long liquid scripts spinning
on the shining parchment of the sea.

Every stroke an effort
through the changing hills and valleys
of this mobile world.

Out across the river mouth,
past the beacons standing sentinel
and over to the empty marshes shining in their
ebb tide nakedness.

The mud is bright in the watery sun,
clothed only with the
delicate geometries
of seabird footprints.

And here, utterly alone,
utterly at peace
I listen to the call of birds against the hissing wind
and faint cacophany of waves;
the sound of freedoms I can scarcely comprehend.


(c) A McN

The marshes at Needs Oar Point on the mouth of the Beaulieu River. Bird footprints in the foreground.

Thin vapours

When the phone rang and you spoke
it was a different you.
You were smaller and further away and I needed to stretch to reach you.

Even then I wasn't sure it was you I had caught because there was
so little substance in my grip.
Where was your confidence, your passion, your opinions?
Where was the cut and thrust of word and jest?
Where was the sparkle now?

I listened. There was little else of value I could do
and even my listening lacked value, being divided between the
compassion of a friend and the mental arithmetic
of times, tasks and what I needed to be doing next.

So what can I offer you?
I'll not be organised enough to call
Nor disciplined enough
to remember you as often as I might.

Although I wish it was, I doubt that
Prayer will be a daily sacrifice;
More likely now
and then.

So this is now.
And then
from time to time
When I will read these lines, thin vapours of prayer
will rise and I will remember you and recall
That even when you died a little bit
It was just a different kind of living
making you more special
in a different kind of way.

(c) A McN