A Line becomes Alarmed

Who’s this sphere
Who’s bounced into our world of lines,
Pushing us around?

We don’t like round
And we don’t like pushed.

What’s this plane rushing by?
She says it’s a circle
But I don’t see the point.
Well actually I only see a point,
Being a line.

How can a point
Take up so much room?
I mean, what does she mean by curved space
When there’s only A to B
Eternally?

Why is she always slipping out of view
And round the bend?
Where will it end?
She says there’s even more than circles,
None of which I’ve seen,
But also ‘up’
A thing I can’t imagine.

I prefer my single point
Into which I push myself forward
And become a line

Aligned entirely with others
In parallel
Whom I need not touch

As we all rush forwards
Without her
Crashing in on the super highway
Of my own singular express.

I stress
I don’t need a ball
At all.

She’s out of limits
Does not fit
into my mind or into any world that I accept
And yet,
as I move, I sense the presence of a great expanse
Of empty space through which she moves
on every side.

Our Lady of Sorrows

Blessed Mother,


You knew

not only how to carry

your own deep sorrows with dignity

but to make room

to hold the sorrows of another.


You were not afraid

of annihilation


Not alarmed

by a fresh dismemberment.


You were the centrifugal force

of love

that holds the accelerating universe

in a wide offering

of ever-expanding joy

amidst the pain.


You are not destroyed.


Wholly identified

with the four directions of the Holy Cross

there is no place your passion does not reach

because you stand with Him.


And we who dare

in microscopic measures

to accept the task


desire to stand

in fresh alignment

with the one who chose


to receive

Everything.



Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, 15th September 2012

On watching Marion and Renee dancing for Our Lady and on hearing Cheryl sing

Such perfect symmetry of the hearts' alliance

Fluid and freeing

And full of joy



The body is moving with the life of the Spirit

Blithely revealing the passions of the soul

Here on the running grass

In the open air

Somewhere

Between kenosis and fulfilment

Somewhere

Between loss and enlargement of the heart’s gift

Somewhere

Between daily dullness in the earth’s shadow

And the bliss of offering in heaven’s light


The dancers speak for us with their fragile limbs


Leap into ecstasy

Reach into kindness

Fall into sadness


Tenderly reminding us

That we in our strange wanderings

Are beautiful to Someone

Somewhere.






Sarah de Nordwall, 8th September 2012, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin 2012