Faith, Time and Tide
We wandered windfall pilgrims’ paths,
Past hedgerows bright with sloe and crimson haw,
Swallows, too, following their autumnal call,
While murmurations of starlings,
And flocks of melancholy geese,
Patterned a darkening estuarine sky,
The ghost-church at Cwm-yr-Eglwys
Tolled an ancient knell of parting day,
A sea-storm squall shifted drowned sailors’ bones,
But we slipped past circles of stone,
Past Carn Ingli – the Hill of Angels -,
To seek penance and resurrection,
A scrupulous dappled procession,
On the high narrow path above the roiling waters,
Past a sacred yew with bleeding stigmata,
Past Celtic cross tracery and Ogham script –
For three pilgrimages to St David’s
Will earn eternal salvation,
As much as one to Jerusalem –
We joined the joyous throng of ghosts,
Some solemn, withdrawn and pentitential,
Some hiding their womanhood beneath their tunics,
To reach the Pilgrims’ Cross, inscribed in rock,
Where we placed our feet in perfect symmetry,
In the well-worn indentations of the soles
Of our ancestors, marching for centuries
West towards the setting sun,
Their footfalls perfectly preserved
In the shadowed wet-soak slate and gleaming rock,
High above the motte and castle ruins at Nevern,
A numinous reminder of the power,
Of Faith and Time and Tide.