On Eling Hill Poems

By Graham Norman

These poems were written over three years at St Mary the Virgin on Eling Hill. They come out of the thousand year old church, from the Saxon foundation stones, the Victorian stained glass windows, the ancient yew trees and the wind blowing up the Solent into Bartley Water, where the tides wash in and out powering the mill and feeding the swans, ducks and geese. They come out of the friends and colleagues who worship and celebrate with me, out of the teaching and preaching, and the quietness, the meditation and the prayer. Above all, they come from the natural God who made me, who gave me words, emotions and an understanding of things. Sometimes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780244549305

Book preview

On Eling Hill Poems

On Eling Hill poems

Graham Norman

Monkeytalks Press

2020

Copyright © 2020 by Graham Norman

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2020

ISBN 978-0-244-54930-5.

Monkeytalks Press

Calmore

Southampton UK

Forward

I am writing this on Boxing Day at around four o’clock. The rain has stopped but it is cloudy and getting dark for we are only a few days past the Winter Solstice. Christmas lights in porches, eaves and gardens in the cul de sac where I live are twinkling gently, casting no shadows, lighting no paths, but, nevertheless, guiding, like the Bethlehem star, not to a stable but to our warm secure homes. I’m sitting on the sofa, taking stock, getting ready to think about and look forward to the next year which starts officially in five days’ time. Yet, for me the New Year has already started. It started on Advent Sunday, the first of December two thousand one hundred and nineteen years after the birth of Jesus. The arbitrary choice of January 1st to start the year has always seemed to me devoid of meaning, whereas the tropical or solar year with its shortest and long-est days and equinoxes tells me that I live on a spherical planet in a solar system in