In The Clear Air Darkness

constantly something is there,

possibly underfoot, within 

touch of skin against thin

places just below that space

where things go right, go wrong,

or just keep going without your

ability to ever fully comprehend

the gentleness that surrounds 

you, unseen, but always felt.

Perhaps this is what the old 

stones were meant to mark,

a sort of essential trade route

into knowing who you are,

glimpsing it finally, not in

what someone else tells you,

but the light God placed inside

you, rising like a lantern 

across your path.

A personal note to dear friends who follow the poems

that I share here on this blog:

This will be the last poem I post here for a few weeks.

It’s not that I won’t be writing, but I am entering a space in 

my sabbatical soon where I won’t have access to my laptop 

or ways to really communicate through this site. 

I’ve also pivoted to completing my next writing project which,

in many ways, I’ve been working on for a very, very long time.

Please be patient with my pausing. I hope you will be pleased

with what emerges out of it. 

I ask for your prayers and good thoughts as I hope to spend

some time listening to what the Spirit is saying while following

a path of old stones.

Love and peace to you,

Tim

P.S.

The photo that I am sharing with this post is one that I took almost

three years ago. It’s the church of St. Mary in Leebotwood, Shropshire. 

One side of family lived in the neighboring town of Church Stretton below

the Long Mynd in what is now the Shropshire Hills AONB (Area Of Outstanding 

Natural Beauty).

The other side of my family lived in the nearby village of All Stretton,  

along its northern edge which borders Leebotwood. That meant St. Mary’s

was the closest parish church to them geographically. 

It’s where my great, great, great, great grandparents were married. 

Most of their children were baptized there also.

The first official record record of the church was in 1138. 

It started out as a hermitage built for a hermit named Bletherus.

It was later enclosed as a chapel that was served by the Augustinian 

Canons of nearby Haughmond Abbey. This area of the “Leye in Botewoode” 

was given to the Abbey by King Henry II in 1170. It was a heavily timbered 

forest and my ancestors who lived there were sawyers.