Turns of the Stars

Returns

Imagination plays the central part
In making sense of absent Sun and Moon ;
Whom Earth herself conceals, in playful art,
As if to test our faith.

And when the rose, the fragrant heart of hearts,
Slips waning from her own autumnal heights,
Do not our minds find peace ; as when she parts,
There’s  promise of next year?

Our  homely orb has turned full over-night ;
New day is come, even as New Year.
With hopeful eyes, we seek the light,
The rosy-fingered Dawn.

Will she come?  Will she come?
Our rosy-fingered Dawn?

Jamie Macnab 2013

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Moonshine

By Highstone Mead there blooms a rose
Whose blush can tell where lies her heart
(As far from her as swallows fly
For distant lands, these shores to part).

For ever must the kindly Moon
Entangle with her darkling thought ;
And braid her flowing hair with lace
Of silver bearing hope un-taught.

Does Queen of Night in truth concern
Herself with cares of hapless love?
And can Selene equal shine
On mortals’ grief from high above?

“Do rays that fall on one of two
Effect the same on other side?
And make the holy combine whole?
For faith!  Let golden hope abide!”

So speaks the rose in colours soft
As heart uplifts to praise the Moon,
Who blesses all that in her trust.
The parting shall be over soon!

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Fishermen’s tales

There is somewhere a lost legend of the first fisherman who spoke of, and lamented, ‘the one that got away’.  But it is sure that many a fisherman has not only repeated the telling of that legend, but has lived it.  Many a fisherman has lost the fish he thought was secure on the line.  Lost?  Indeed? But surely Izaak Walton had it more true.  “Brother,” he said, “Ye never lost what ye never had.”  For, indeed, that fish was never yours to lose ; the fish is not yours until it’s in the bag.

Well, fishing was ever a pastime for optimists.  But is it as Johnson once said? “Fishing is a game played with a stick and a string ; with a fish on one end and a fool on the other.”  Perhaps optimists are fools ; but, if they are, then they are holy fools.  For optimism attests to a profound belief about the nature of the world.  And it attests also to something profound about human nature.  For people are creatures that hope.

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