Blackcap

It is bubbling from the shrub again.
April. A fair week of it.
With the grace of sunshine and mercy
Of stillness. I wake early and hear it.

It is like a fond voice all but forgotten.
It is like dusting off an old recording.
It is like remembering that even in absence
There is presence in another place
Or that the song you sang for a season
(before winter, or dark, or the cloying damp)
Has reason to return.

Threshold

Was recently on a retreat kind of thing for people who do the same sort of job as me, pioneering new forms of church. For a lot of us doing what we are called to do was like venturing over some sort of threshold, venturing in unconventional ways, learning to do things that seem impossible or unimaginable.

Threshold

Finally, there is the rite of passage
after all the others, the normal ones,
only there are no brides or gowns,
no clink of crystal glasses,
no scroll and no invited guests.

There is just a threshold beneath the sky,
the border fence has been ripped out,
its twisted metal rusting in the saline air,
and mentors, minders and my father
have tiptoed back into history and the earth.

Yet somehow a line is crossed,
a fence in borrowed time, vaulted,
the door of possibilities clicks behind you
and there is only you, the pull of the tide against the sea bed,
the choice of whether or not to fly.