Questions to a swift, returning

Just a wee bit of writing practice, emerging from a writing workshop the other day...
Asking a question of a swift, returning to nest - possibly undertones of COVID lockdown at play...

Questions to a swift, returning

Did Sahara's rising heat
thrill you
                        as you
                      soared and spilled above –
blazing a trail
                      tracing the yearly path?
                                     Such grace.
What did you spy
           upon your travels?
                      What smells
                       and sights
            and sounds
                       did you collect
                                  and revel in?
How was the journey,
             little one?
                    And are you happy here
                   nestling in such homely eaves,
           chill Upland winds ruffling such
                                    long-wending feathers?

I long to see and be where you have been.

c. Nik Mac 2020

Imago Dei

Imago Dei 

We bear the marks
of grace upon our face,
carry within us God’s DNA:
God-made.
Sparks of divinity
course through our veins;
our warp and weft,
the stuff of stars.
God shaped...
and so,
we are.

Heaven-made creatures,
birthed from earth,
we dance between the world and universe:
God’s own.
Flesh and blood
and soul and bone
combined in
holy mystery.
God loved...
and we,
God’s mastery.
                    c. Nik Mac 2020

Emerging

Emerging from blog hibernation...
Emerging from lockdown...
and, trying to emerge from the bleakness...

I always set out with the best of intentions when it comes to journal or blog-keeping.
What I continually discover, is that what is consistent is my ad-hoc randomness.
Perhaps I work best to deadlines.
Perhaps I'm not one for finding a profound thought every day and proclaiming it;
sending it half-cocked, and not quite formed, out into the world.
Perhaps I lack ambition, perhaps I just get tired, and often, I just get distracted -
the joy and the curse of a butterfly mind...
As the great emergence from lockdown begins, its effects, for me, seem to be more tiredness, even more butterfly mind.
We all of us have our different reactions and coping mechanisms:
clearly, one of mine is napping and it's hard to focus when you've nodded off unexpectedly in the office chair.

Thinking of lockdown, of COVID-19, and of coping:
I've been curious to see how others have been affected, and their particular coping mechanisms and reactions. I listen to folk on the phone, or watch interactions in yet another 'zoom' meeting, or dig under the walls of dogma and political ideology that passes for news to try and find what the reality might be.
There is talk of collective trauma, lots of rage against 'the machine' of the Establishment.
There has been corresponding amounts of bluster and deflection by the Establishment.
There have been deaths, too many deaths.
When our PM talks of 'success', I think of the line from 'The Princess Bride': 'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.'
Perhaps the toxic combination of the old British sense of exceptionalism and a Brexit-induced nostalgia for the glory of Empire is perverting something that has been so utterly devastating into something to cheer about.
Double-think and newspeak live, and Orwell was a prophet.

I yearn for government with conscience, that seeks the commonweal.
May your kingdom come, Lord...