“

Summer Night, Cornwall

Soft summer night. I stand above the bay

Silvered horizon, the moon’s distorted track

Reflecting boundary between this sphere and the next

Folds of different darkness shadowed at my feet

Drowsed roar of surf on broken cliffs beneath.

Across water village lights speak friends

Homes, warm bodies merged in love.

It’s true that I could walk the darkened lanes

Risk unseen briars, stumbling in the now black grass.

But it would take time. Lights go out

And sleep cuts off that good world from my reach.

I turn to look above. The stars are village lights

A haven cut off by vasts of time and space.

Are they too partners in a dance of life

Complex joy of satisfied desire

Singing music beyond range of human ear?

Suppose my reference point was not myself

Sea, village, stars defined by where I stand?

So I no longer gazed across a void

Missing songs in which I cannot join

But were in truth already in the dance?

Empowered with sureness I am not alone

With knowledge that what lies out there is true

Then I am no lost stranger here

Outside the wall, cut off by all past choices

From dancing rhythm, the beauty of those voices?

Could I remain here? Self-denied my rightful place

Self-condemned to darkness, refusing grace

Passage across the boundaries of the spheres

To starlight music that denies the void

To village firelight love to be enjoyed.

I had been reading C. S. Lewis’s “The Discarded Image”, where he speaks of the mediaeval world view of humankind being confined to the innermost sphere of the heavens (delimited by the orbit of the moon), excluded from full participation in the music of the spheres by the Fall –our own choices –. Then, a few nights later, I saw the lights of Boscastle with the moonlit sea between and the idea came.

Questioning the winds

Where do you come from, south west wind

Sharp raindrops fresh against my face?

From Atlantic deeps, past the Azores

Across Cornish cliffs and Devon moors

Up Severn’s stream, by Newark town

Soaking fields, ploughed, furrowed, brown.

Where do you come from north east wind

Stinging sleet against bowed head?

From taiga, tundra, cold Zemlya’s lea

Norway’s snow mountains, wave grey North Sea

Marram dunes, marsh and windswept wold

Bleak bringer of deep dark and cold.

Where do you come from, north west wind

Sweeping storm clouds across the stars?

From far Ellesmere Land, the elder ice

Greenland glaciers, lone Hirta’s height

Glasgow slate rooftops, Pennine fells

Calling adventure, weaving spells.

Where do you come from, south east wind

Touching gentle on my cheek?

Arabian desert, Danube plain

Moselle vineyards, chalkland terrain

Essex creeks, woods, fertile fen

Breathing warm summer has come again.

2023

Evening view from Moab

The westering sun

Dips towards that far off sea

Whose waves will forever break beyond my reach

Orange light, hazy through the glow of dust

Still warms my tired limbs

As I sit quiet beneath the blossomed vine.

Morning in such brief spring

The smiling lad, tall between the cypress trees

A strange, hungry for life and hope and joy

And finding them with me

Who’d known no other than a sister’s care.

But so soon an end

I still walk to that low mound

To renew the sad flowers that wilting, mark

One of the three I ever truly loved.

The others also lost

To fear of the unknown and mem’ry’s hold.

Across the valley

Weak starpoints of candlelight

Mark homes with life within. I will never know

The fate of those two I held and kissed

And turning, left that day

By the river bank now so long ago.

The climb back up the hill.

Eyes burnt blind with bitter tears

Shame that I stayed yet relief that the unknown

Would not be met heartbroken, far away.

True, my rebuilt life

Has given me a numbed happiness.

But what might have been

Had I gone on with them?

The steep hill the same but to a different end

Of joy or pain. The choice behind me now

Yet my heart still cries

O Ruth, Naomi. That spring long ago.

15/2/04

This poem took years to write: the idea came from reading is the Book of Ruth. It seemed to me that Orpah made a different choice that the writer (unlike may commentators) does not condemn. But her choice took her out of the story and she could never know what might have been, just as Ruth at the end of her life could not know what was to be.

The view is from the King's Highway, the ancient road that runs north to south along the eastern rim of the Jordan Valley. It would have passed close to Oprah's home in Moab

Ascension Remembered

“since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning,

it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account “ Luke 1 v 3

Luke’s introduction to his 2 volumes of the life of Jesus and what happened next.

You say your road was over Olive Mount?

That you are Luke, the friend of brother Paul

Come to question us old men who can recall

Events of a quarter century ago?

Who saw him leave this earth, heard not “goodbye”

But “I’ll always be with you.”

Well …..

We climbed up Olive Mount together.

He had appeared as he so often did

In those strange days that seemed more real than time.

When he explained all we had not understood

Before he died and rose. Gave hope and peace,

Joy’s freedom, the changing of the world.

We sat on Olive Mount together

“The kingdom now restored to Israel?”

Heard “Now it is not for you to know the time.

Wait. Holy Spirit’s presence will come on you.

Fill you with power to tell all you’ve seen and heard

From the city to the world’s far ends.

We stood on Olive Mount together.

When – he was not there. Hidden by a cloud.

We still looked upward. Two white dressed men appeared.

Challenged. Told us where he’d gone. That he’d return.

Then we all knew that this was chapter’s end.

Our own world would never be the same.

We walked down Olive Mount together.

Silent. Sad our friend seemed gone but certain

His promises would prove true. The Spirit come.

Fill us, bless us, give us strength for coming years.

With him, in him, he in is us we’d go.

Be his people to reclaim his world.

We came home from Olive Mount together.

Past garden where we’d slept and feared and fled.

Crossing steep street where he’d stumbled with the cross.

To upper room where we’d seen he was alive

To wait and pray together, not knowing

The how of the changing of the world.

Now ….

See! We look across to Olive Mount

If it could speak it would confirm these things.

I know, dear Luke, that as a good historian

Your calling is to focus on solid facts.

But old men’s thoughts, hopes, feelings from the past

These too are truths of his Kingdom’s world.

May 2026

Many of us know the stories of the Bible almost too well. Sometimes it is good to try and imagine ourselves. one of the people who were there but who don't get a specific mention. One of the apostles perhaps who though listed in Acts chapter 1 but not again - Andrew, or Bartholomew or Simon the Zealot. There are traditions of course but no certainties. But Luke could well have met one of them while he was collecting the material for his 2 part work we now know as Luke's Gospel and Acts, around AD55 while Paul was being held in prison in Caesarea before the voyage to Rome. What we would have thought and felt coming back into Jerusalem having seen Jesus go to his Father?

I thought I would leave this one on the site for a bit longer : perhaps it makes a good contrast : Orphah's sense of loss with the certain hope of the unknown apostle