Shoreline

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Down the dusty slope to the long sweep of
gold sand and the beach café’s garlic gambas
and Pablo’s distinctively rich dark brown
coffee where the chief scent of the morning

is of suncream and warmed skin and quiet
conversation is accompanied by
out-of-control symphonies of wind-blown
wires thrashing the masts of a rainbow of

sailboards – and yes – we come here every year
to tell again of the turquoise and the
turtles and shyly aware faithfulness
to-a-fault to these times and to these hot

prawns and coffee like this and even to
the same sun oil and quieting stilling
soothing murmur of the ocean of love
and abiding in hearts and souls that know

one another so well that the shoreline
paddling and the holding hands and the light
and the deep and the sad and the funny
conversation and affectionate and

glad recollection will carry us both –
after our falling into the deepest
of deep sleeps – unto shoreline and sunshine
of our universal eternity

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Robert’s good counsel

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Barcelona – click once / twice (or pinch) to enlarge

‘Sorry, I’m a bit pushed for time today,’ I said to my friend Robert, twenty years or so ago. ‘I’ve got to think of something to say to the Women’s Institute tonight. Their invitation asks me to speak on ‘any subject that takes your fancy’ and I’ve come a bit unstuck.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Robert (and RSC will know exactly who he is!) – ‘just go and tell them about one or two things that really light up your life.’

So for an hour or thereabouts I told a large gathering of women my story of what it had been like to live and study for a month on the very edge of Bethlehem, wandering into Jerusalem in the early mornings to buy my daily newspaper, about the colours of the souks, the sounds of the calls to prayer, the scent and the sound of olive groves, of sunrise, and of sunsets over the Judaean desert, of ancient history, and of contemporary youths singing together in groups outside, in late evening warmth, eating ice cream.

Other invitations followed and I have thought so many times, with deep thankfulness, of Robert’s ‘tell them about one or two things that really light up your life.’ And since then, with a more keenly focused eye, I have noticed the things that light up my life – Barcelona being one such recent bright spot. Friends are such a gift in our lives. Robert’s good counsel abides …

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