Is giorra cabhair Dé ná an doras.
Divine help is closer than the door.
(Celtic proverb)
If you have a few moments, please watch Blessings, a short film, at Emergence Magazine. There are no ads, no spamming of any sort. It’s a beautiful reading of part of David Whyte’s Blessings poems.
The wild white gull comes screaming, billowed and tossed
In the sacred air, over the shore and inland
On the storm. How far and soaring fast it flings
The springing magic of the earth, feathers
Aflame in the cruciform of blood and sky,
And tendons taut with excellence! How high
And blest it wheels in tribute through the wind,
To turn past beauty’s shaping to the sea!
We walked where the ancient pier juts into the sea.
Stood on the rim of the pool, by the circle
of black boulders. No one saw we were there
and everyone who had ever been there
stood silently in air.
The heron stands in water where the swamp
Has deepened to the blackness of a pool,
Or balances with one leg on a hump
Of marsh grass heaped above a musk-rat hole.
He walks the shallow with an antic grace.
The great feet break the ridges of the sand,
The long eye notes the minnow’s hiding place.
His beak is quicker than a human hand.
He jerks a frog across his bony lip,
Then points his heavy bill above the wood.
The wide wings flap but once to lift him up.
A single ripple starts from where he stood.
Once up on a time, they say, there was a girl . . . there was a boy . . . there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did . . . and what he did . . . and how they learned to survive it. This is what they did . . . and why one failed . . . and why another triumphed in the end. And I know that it’s true, because I danced at their wedding and drank their very best wine.
Over a year ago, Christine, inspired by beeblu blog, posted her own beautiful Search Engine Poetry. It was something I meant to do at the time, but I put off and eventually I forgot about it. Last weekend I spent some time sorting through my email and came across the email notice about Christine’s post, and decided to have a look at my search engine terms to see what I could come up with.