SAINT COLUMBA AND THE CURLEWS

If I were obliged to chose a patron saint

it might be Columba – his Irish name

Colmkill, Dove of the Churchyard. He was

a poet, a scholar, a missionary

to the Western Isles, and all of Scotia.

So what had drawn him to Christianity

on the far Celtic edge of Europe?

One god? Redemption? Or the hieratic

Latin manuscripts he had learned to read –

long after the empire of Ancient Rome

had imploded west of Byzantium?

He had studied, I am sure, the sunlit groves

of the Hesperides, and would dream, when days

lengthened into gentler nights, and warmer,

summer winds blew from the distant south,

of bird-thronged orchards lush with golden apples –

but always heard the curlews calling

along the dark and glittering shore.