Arts Articles
We gather
Then, we gathered each week round a broken branch of cherry, or three camellias: one bruised by gusts; one infurled like the fist of an infant, another opening to perfection. Now we gather round the light of this screen: its quilt work of faces stitched by the unseen. We gather...
Psalm for a digital age
I sent you a message. You stopped answering a time ago. On my knees I begged to know what name you had become. Your silent laughter filled the multiverse. I consulted the address book and called again all the names I found there. I shouted, whispered, coaxed, wheedled, texted even....
Lampedusa, October 2013
This poem is based on words spoken by divers from the Italian military and emergency services I the image I cannot shake from my mind is of those bodies packed in the wreck their eyes, and their arms held high as if calling, calling for my help we could not...
The Raising of Lazarus
for Graham Shaw (1944-2021) Lazarus, hope of my spring self, held in this black earth, resting beneath the hollow of a tree. And then Yeshua finds you, his tired and tender hands reach you; and, exhausted, he pulls you from the dark, he brings you to the green warmth of...
Seven Small Experiments with Language and Faith
For Brian Ashley of Shetland Meeting, who calls for a generosity of spirit to embrace diverse ways of expressing our experience (Letters, 28 May). 1. Omega and Alpha sit squat on Skull Hill. As Christ dies, the dark night of language splits like a fig. Faith, like dawn’s yolk gutters gold...
Elijah’s Crossing
i.m. Graham Shaw, (1944-2021), author, teacher, priest, friend There, at the footbridge, in Lublin province, Kacyzne’s* camera finds Elijah out, his cap, his waistcoat, the shod foot lifted back, crossing the river, a grey flame. And working horses (the charcoal, the chestnut), break for the silver waters running ...
Given
The words lined up nicely – didn’t they just. Big and small, banging their pans till their echoes rattled in my tight chest, their once-, twice-swallowed meaning doing its level best to squeeze clear of the Light, into the light of day: my throat just a handy device, a dispenser,...
On Reading the Book of Ezekiel in a Quaker Meeting
Foreseen, told in the name of One not (yet) born again, jealous, importunate God landlord of His People: Israel has no need or want to wander, will have found a plot to till and tell in less than honeyed words commanded, script in stone, covenanted, their ark, their brood, all...
In Meeting
We sat together in the white-walled room where no one spoke. God didn’t happen. I shuffled, stared at the carpet, wanted a crack in the silence, words, something to change. The shopping list in my mind said soap, potatoes, jam, then went askew adding things that weren’t for...
The minute was good enough
Yet what of that time can be explained? Are we engaged or are we looking away? Can we expunge her eyes as she looked back from the boat shipping her to Barbados without husband, friend or child? Sweet Parthenia did you have faith in us, the unborn, friends to go...