I have searched for God
in the dry echo of tall stone buildings
where the laws are written upon the walls.
I have found God
in the broken bread of light across the moorland,
as it silvers from the miracle of the earth.
--Kenneth Steven, Scots poet, from Iona: New and Selected Poems (Paraclete poetry)
It is not about going on a particular night in the knowledge of finding a foal;
it is the chance of it, the perhaps – the making of time to try.
The struggling up at three in the morning in the strangeness of the dark
to get ready in soft voices; the going out into the fields on padded feet,
no longer worrying about what tasks have been completed, which left undone.
It is about walking together leaving silvery trails, uneven, through long lush grass;
about coming at last to the place where you hoped it might happen,
for some things are not certain – in this world where almost everything
is written down and long decided – and always it has been that way.
This water meadow where there is always scent of something not quite known;
a bowl made of low hills and round it the ancient trees held in the still dark.
However many yards away the foal already trying to hobble onto legs ridiculously big,
and she pouring into him all the love that she possesses.
Unselfconsciously and with reverence
it is about kneeling in the long wet grass to watch, to wonder.
--Kenneth Steven, Scots poet, from Iona: New and Selected Poems (Paraclete Poetry).
Two black and brown puffs of duckling
Little bits of thistledown
That could have blown away in a breeze
Bobbing beneath the bank of the river.
As I approached they bobbed out into the current
Were washed away like flotsam
Making high peeps of sound
Till a bend snatched them out of sight.
All night I worried for them
Went out into the raining darkness
To the lion roar of the river
Listened in hope for their peeping.
And I wondered that such little things survived at all,
Winter and spring, the angry traffic of this world,
To grow safe and strong into wings
To learn to fly.
--Kenneth C. Steven (1968- ) Scottish poet and author, from Iona: Poems, 2000.
