His face shines upon me

Come close and all you see are roughly-hewn shapes, a knobbly etching, the accumulation of years of exposure to the wind, the rain and the sun. Stand back just a little, and the traveller becomes clear, his questing eyes endlessly searching the horizon. By his side, a faithful donkey, placing simple trust in his master’s omnipotence.

Who are they, these travelling figures, frozen forever in their path through the plaza? No plaque proclaims their fame, no distinguishing feature reveals their identity. But something in their stance, their restless immobility, speaks to me, a fellow traveller, equally anonymous in this city of endless cobbles and secret, winding alleyways.

I came for solitude. Blissful, restful, anonymous solitude.

Sitting by this traveller – alone, yet, with a companion in his donkey, never truly alone – it comes to me. I too am alone, but never truly alone. There is another living being with me, although I can’t hear it, feel it or see it. I can talk to it, as the traveller might talk to his donkey, but I will hear no words in return. And yet, where I go, it will go; what I feel, it will feel; what I experience, it will experience.

I have been searching my own horizon, but with eyes veiled in fear.

‘The Lord make his face to shine upon you.’

In this enveloping sunlight, with my silent guide, I begin to see what that might mean.

‘And be gracious unto you.’

My own, as yet silent, companion is my witness that the Lord has indeed been gracious unto me. I knew it, but now I feel it. And at last, in my own way, I can be thankful.

Dear Angels all
A late, late, late showing (*pant pant*) – later than a blackmailed David Letterman’s Late Late show – for Claire’s brief. Typically late of course. But I keep my record of having responded to every brief.

I took Claire’s brief very personally: “Reflect on society and its rites of passage”. As my elder son has just moved to ‘big school’, it struck a chord with me. And here’s what came out and lord knows why but Gilbert and Sullivan were in my head as I was writing it, perhaps because it ‘struck a chord’..

The New School Song

There’s a rhythm to the Register from which the names are called
Which remind us of the places we come from:
It was Tim and Sid and Alistair
Eric, Jack and Fred;
Now it’s Quentin, Tarquin, Mungo, Midge and Q’um (yes, ‘Q’um’)

And the alphabet arranges, as the school timetable changes,
Into subjects that perplex and stir the ire.
It was Numeracy and Literacy,
ICT and PHSE;
Now it’s Latin, French, Geography,
Maths, Design Technology,
History, Biology
And Compulsory Choir (or is that ‘Quire’?)

Hierarchy has vocabulary that’s a buttress against anarchy
And keeps us in the sets where we belong.
Instead of Head Teachers and Classes
We have Forms and we’ve High Masters
And a week’s Half-Term’s now ‘Remedy’ a fortnight long (too long!)

He comes laden home with literature that’s foreign,
Strange and technical
And which makes his body shake and sometimes groan;
But he sits for hours studying,
While we sit somewhat worrying,
He enjoys rising to the challenge on his own (good man!)

For when rules are given, ends are clear, structures set from here to there,
Then there’s a rhythm and a reason to each day.
For the randomness is organised,
The arbitrary’s justified,
So there’s progress and there’s meaning and there’s somehow fellow feeling
I guess school is just like language in that way! (We say!)

Meeting first grandchild
On the day I turn sixty
Talk about my rites

Newly born

Shifting constructions of dream matter
Have been replaced by the need
Simply to be here
Now by turns I am rock, water, air, fire
And on any weekday I would die for you
Or kill
Without regret or question.

17 in the 70s

Stealing something, anything, from the Spar,
Fags are best, though not because we’re smokers,
It’s to appease that bastard Johnny Carr
And his band of hangers on and jokers.
Will there come a stage ever in this life
When I don’t always have to prove my spurs,
When I can leave behind this teenage strife,
And move on to the rules of His and Hers?
Because the need to fit in and conform
Chameleon with never resting eye
In order to adapt to each new norm,
Has made me wake up to the fact that I
Want more than quick gropes at the disco
And watching The Streets of San Francisco.

Walking outside
you can see the sky better
on windows in winter,
reflected in the grey of unseen panes.

Running outside
you can see the sky glitter
in puddles of water,
shining like mirrors with a lattice of trees.

Seeing him yesterday,
perhaps for the last time,
he sees from the inside
the sky in its immense greyness,
hitched to the drip
of life screening liquid
through the tangle of wires.

Not ready yet
but getting there.