Black and Gold

Cass’s crwth and Rob’s flute add to the rich autumnal droney feel of this meditation. The lyrics came from seeing a bee trapped in our double-glazing, knowing that I had a choice: ‘to foresake you or set you free’. Life turns on such moments. We ordinary humans can and do bring ‘small mercies’ to others and such actions seem to ‘restore us’ to our latent humanity, as well as bringing aid to the ‘other’. After all, we all go ‘into the dark’, eventually, and, ‘too soon’ (as Mary Oliver puts it in her poem ‘The Summer Day‘). Each year, the natural world shows us how life works with its spring of birthing, its summer of abundance, its autumnal fruiting and, finally, winter’s call to yield ‘to the dark’. Helping others live out their ‘dreamtime’, when and where we are able to do so, seems a natural part of being fully human …

Lyrics
Your face I saw
through the glazing window
I recognised myself in you
I knew my choice
to foresake you or set you free.
All this is everywhere
small mercies restore us
in gold September
poised before we turn towards the dark.
It’s beautiful, the turning year,
the way we share our every fragment –
a windfall fed you, gave you more dreamtime …

You can listen to ‘Black and Gold’ here.