It’s exactly a year since we voted in the UK to leave the European Union and I’m still trying to recover from the shock. It’s taken a year for us to get to the beginnings of negotiations and they kicked off this week in Brussels, with disagreement, of course. Although a second Independence Vote in…
Tag: poem
mothering sunday creed
I believe in mothers. I believe in mothers who watched the appearance of the thin blue line with longing. I believe in mothers who watched for it with dread. I believe in mothers whose hair became thick and sumptuous. I believe in mothers whose hair fell out. I believe in mothers who wore jeans till…
Ash Wednesday
Penitential purple colour of kings, a seamless robe and Lenten altars hung heavy with the weight of watching. * Forty days to face facts, nights of unease or surprise like the first splash of violets in dead leaves. * Dust we are, to dust we shall return, by ashen cross and fast we learn that…
epiphany snow
I had not thought it could be so white. Ice white under frost white long shadows blue white. The cold bite of a winter street houses squat stiff walls, safe as a knot. The ground as a sheet unyielding hard as a promise is to keep. The everyday suspended. Sitting in its place,…
last day
Last day of the year and old man’s beard smothers the hedgerow like the fresh fall of snow we haven’t had this winter. No flowers but the red tips of hips and haws perched in between the palest green lichen creeping along blackthorn. The damp creeps too, up from the earth to meet…
advent poem (i)
This, This is why it’s good to be alive – the rising and scattering of wings up into the early mist, stabbing white on grey on white; the creeping fingers of sycamores circling the late November wood. And advent soon to dawn. His coming will be silent, swift, piercing the dark, stripping us bare –…
advent poem (ii)
We tripped, and falling forward into Advent we blundered into waiting, unprepared the altar purpled; candles spluttering a welcome for the hesitating king. As candles marked the time we took to walk the plodding path, something unfolded there: our ancient fathers knowing floods would come prepared to sail to a different home and prophets…
part time priest 