Saint Cuthbert’s Isle – a poem by Helen Jones

Saint Cuthbert's Isle

By day he watches
Gulls swooping overhead, looping and turning,
Twist in impossible intricacies of flight,
Sun touching films of gold on waves’ white tips,
The seals, grey otherness undulating over water,
Their heads a punctuation on a darkened sea,
The eider-sergeants marshalling straight lines
Draw spaces for the writing of the world.
Herons, stark capitals standing on the shore,
And in the margins of his eyes, black oystercatchers
Are tiny illustrations in the book of life.
By night he hears
The seal-song slicing through his ageing bones
As knife cuts paper.
He watches stars
Swirling their silver on a velvet sky
And feels the motion of the world around.
He does not know
Eadfrith will make a book from all these things.
Here he can read the book of all the world
And know all things are one.



Helen Jones was born in Chester, U.K. in 1954. She gained a degree in English, many years ago from University College London and later an M.Ed. from the University of Liverpool. She is now happily retired and spend a lot of her time writing and making a new garden. Her poetry has been published in several journals in the U.K.