1.
You carry me on your shoulders
through the dark
and explain to me
the stars.
The owl in the old oak
calls in the night.
You chuckle, joyful
in that mysterious bird.
One day you received a stuffed fox
and, to everyone's horror,
set it up in the hall.
You wanted to put tiny
light bulbs in its eyes and make it see.
Later the owl came
to sit above the grandfather clock
striking the hours
with its hoots.
When I was six
and staying at the big house,
the Blue Room I remember,
you came and slept in the great bed
next to mine.
Before dawn I lay awake
a little sick or something,
you took me into your sheets
and together we watched
the light come.
Dawn, never so mysterious,
never again so filled with rapture,
your explanations of the rising sun,
the globe that spun, the east-west
meaning, time and openings
of day and night revolvings.
When the sun came
striking the gauze curtains
and filtering into the room
I was one with the planet's turning
lying in your arms.
2.
Long after the uncertainties began
I still went to church with you.
It seemed there was nothing else to do
and anyway there was love.
Stumbling hesitatingly through the Creed
one day I heard you say
"- in so far as it can be believed "
and my heart leapt
letting go all fears of losing love,
thrilling me with the vast courage
of that great doubt.
I sang the hymns so high
into the rafters I think
the tiles moved.
JHC 25.12.93
