It was the piebald horse in next door’s garden
frightened me out of a dream
with her dawn whinny. I was back
in the boxroom of the house,
my brother’s room now,
full of ties and sweaters and secrets.
Bottles chinked on the doorstep,
the first bus pulled up to the stop.
The rest of the house slept
except for my father. I heard
him rake the ash from the grate,
plug in the kettle, hum a snatch of a tune.
Then he unlocked the back door
and stepped out into the garden.
Autumn was nearly done, the first frost
whitened the slates of the estate.
He was older than I had reckoned,
his hair completely silver,
and for the first time I saw the stoop
of his shoulder, saw that
his leg was stiff. What’s he at?
So early and still stars in the west?
They came then: birds
of every size, shape, colour; they came
from the hedges and shrubs,
from eaves and garden sheds,
from the industrial estate, outlying fields,
from Dubber Cross they came
and the ditches of the North Road.
The garden was a pandemonium
when my father threw up his hands
and tossed the crumbs to the air. The sun
cleared O’Reilly’s chimney
and he was suddenly radiant,
a perfect vision of St Francis,
made whole, made young again,
in a Finglas garden.
‘My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis’
(for Brendan Kennelly)
Paula Meehan
Sometimes wonder comes as a flash of insight, a sudden, visceral joy flooding me. It is not so much that I find this treasure, as that Grace brings this nugget to me, unbidden, unlooked for, as pure gift.
More often I have to search deep to recover my sense of wonder, pondering what is right under my nose, what is before me in all the circumstances and people of this day, with a camera acting as a sort of divining-rod-for-wonder in my hand. Or wonder might arise out of writing, a dawning understanding whilst scribbling in my journal, or a quick illumination of pleasure in finding a ‘right’ metaphor for that moment in the making of a poem; sometimes it even bubbles up as I feel a painting developing layer on layer.
In Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics, Christine Valters Painter reminds me that ‘the ancient stories tell us the wound is where the jewels are hidden’. This is where my journal can help me ‘mine for gold’, digging into my wounds once again, sifting through my inner detritus, in order to see the places where God is revealed in my past and in my present; to see the places where my faith is being refined.
It seems to me a staggering wonder that such jewels might be found in me.
But wonder isn’t a treasure to be hoarded.
Painter goes onto ask, ‘how might those wounds contain the very medicine you are called to offer to the world?’.
I pray for the strength to resist the urge to bury and hide my ‘wounds’, so that I may clear-sightedly see them for what they are, so that the Spirit can reveal the treasures hidden within. May I recognise and accept these hard-won insights as jewels, as pearls of great price.
May I then have the courage to scatter these treasures to the four winds, asking the Spirit to make them land where they be of most use, where they might be a blessing and a balm to another, where they may open a door to the Wonder.
Word whose breath is the world-circling atmosphere,
Word that utters the world that turns the wind,
Word that articulates the bird that speeds upon the air,
Word that blazes out the trumpet of the sun,
Whose silence is the violin-music of the stars,
Whose melody is the dawn, and harmony the night,
Word traced in water of lakes, and light on water,
Light on still water, moving water, waterfall
And water colours of cloud, of dew, of spectral rain,
Word inscribed on stone, mountain range upon range of stone,
Word that is fire of the sun and fire within
Order of atoms, crystalline symmetry,
Grammar of five-fold rose and six-fold lily,
Spiral of leaves on a bough, helix of shells,
Rotation of twining plants on axes of darkness and light,
Instinctive wisdom of fish and lion and ram,
Rhythm of generation in flagellate and fern,
Flash of fin, beat of wing, heartbeat, beat of the dance,
Hieroglyph in whose exact precision is defined
Feather and insect-wing, refraction of multiple eyes,
Eyes of the creatures, oh myriadfold vision of the world,
Statement of mystery, how shall we name
A spirit clothed in world, a world made man?
‘Word Made Flesh ‘
Kathleen Raine
a door to wonder. Canon 7D. f2.8. 1/13. ISO 100.
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