These poems come from the beauty of the glimpsed moment … a precious jewel held for a short time amid the pain and sorrow of the world, then let go into the bigger picture … The beauty is what we remember, what gives the moment its significance.



It’s the way it’s always been:

to reach the sea, to stand

watching, waiting; to know

that nothing can be unravelled

to its core



but is like reflecting

where wild flowers

gathered in a vase, framed

by a shore cottage window

make of themselves

a sea-wide subject:

the beauty

of things together.



A blackbird sings

and the song echoes

in fragments of memory.



Joy Mead is a member of the Iona Community and the author of The One Loaf, Making Peace in Practice and Poetry, Where are the Altars?, Words and Wonderings and A Way of Knowing, all published by Wild Goose Publications. She has been involved in development education and justice and peace work and occasionally leads creative writing groups.