A Cage To Hold My Dreams
Impromptu Thoughts On A Headland
On a rocky headland overlooking the ocean
I am more blessed than a priory of holy nuns
because on a clear day I can see paradise
and hear the voices of those I have loved
ride in on the foaming waves.
Could anything be simpler than loving
the rugged beauty of this place, the carved
grandeur of its cliffs and zig-zag paths and
wild brambles and its unmatchable tranquility
I watch the sea, impatient and mindless as a bull,
sharpening its horns on these lower rocks,
trying to reach above them to lick the wiry
brown grasses at my feet. I know I am safe yet
still I admire its dogged persistence.
The cry of the seagulls echo like faint radio
signals above the wind, as they search and hover
and suddenly swoop like bolts from a crossbow
into the dancing sea, tucking their wings into
their bodies as the spear through the water.
A small offshore island inhabited only by birds
sits amid the swirling blue of the sea,
level-topped and lonely, like a giant dining-table
waiting since the beginning of time to be set
but so far--and it will get no further--only
a rough topcloth of wild heather and gorse and
bracken has managed to be laid.
All around me, God's handcrafts cry out to be
recognised ; here, in these scenes of natural
splendour, mystical to the mind and magical
to the eye, as I take in sights unaltered through
millions of years of evolution, I return to
my direct and simple faith.
I am nearer to heaven today, touching these
humble stones, or watching the waves crash
below me than ever I feel in church ; because
God put this earth in place and this place on earth,
he didn't build churches nor fill them with
statuettes and gold trinkets. The open air is his
cathedral and this is his servant at prayer.
Ballymacrown 050303
I am more blessed than a priory of holy nuns
because on a clear day I can see paradise
and hear the voices of those I have loved
ride in on the foaming waves.
Could anything be simpler than loving
the rugged beauty of this place, the carved
grandeur of its cliffs and zig-zag paths and
wild brambles and its unmatchable tranquility
I watch the sea, impatient and mindless as a bull,
sharpening its horns on these lower rocks,
trying to reach above them to lick the wiry
brown grasses at my feet. I know I am safe yet
still I admire its dogged persistence.
The cry of the seagulls echo like faint radio
signals above the wind, as they search and hover
and suddenly swoop like bolts from a crossbow
into the dancing sea, tucking their wings into
their bodies as the spear through the water.
A small offshore island inhabited only by birds
sits amid the swirling blue of the sea,
level-topped and lonely, like a giant dining-table
waiting since the beginning of time to be set
but so far--and it will get no further--only
a rough topcloth of wild heather and gorse and
bracken has managed to be laid.
All around me, God's handcrafts cry out to be
recognised ; here, in these scenes of natural
splendour, mystical to the mind and magical
to the eye, as I take in sights unaltered through
millions of years of evolution, I return to
my direct and simple faith.
I am nearer to heaven today, touching these
humble stones, or watching the waves crash
below me than ever I feel in church ; because
God put this earth in place and this place on earth,
he didn't build churches nor fill them with
statuettes and gold trinkets. The open air is his
cathedral and this is his servant at prayer.
Ballymacrown 050303
