Pilgrimage meetings

I'm finally getting round to updating the blog with some poems I have written during my sabbatical this Autumn - and hopefully then some of the earlier ones I never put on. Here's the first, inspired by discovering that meeting people (on the North Wales Pilgrim's Way) was even more of a gift than watching the birds...

Watching 

You begin to learn how

if you just keep your eyes fixed

on that tree, that group of bushes, where

you thought you saw

a flash of wing

a bright eye looking back 

then, drawn along the line of your attending

from branch to branch

a movement in the leaves -

there!

- the bird will come. 

We also are great hiders,

wary of the world

keeping our vulnerable selves

safe in the topmost branches

or the deep hedge shadows. 

But I am learning how

if I just keep my face turned

towards your face, if I can -

I may then notice there, with eyes alert

(and other nameless senses)

the briefest shadow

or the flash of fire. 

And if I keep my eyes and heart so still and steady - open

with my attention fixed and fully given -

then down along that line between us

may come, slow inch by inch,

another such as I 

learning that here is one that can be trusted

teaching that I can trust this time of meeting

finding that we can learn to trust together

the one who watches us.