Caldey Island

Caldey Island

During the summers of seminary, when term had finished, I spend several weeks, over several years, working in the tea gardens on Caldey Island, and was delighted to attend Compline each night. The monks were welcoming, and the experience often returns to me in prayer, and sustains me even now after all those years that have passed. The following verses are me reminiscing today on the time spent there.

An island, remote, covered in gorse

A haven of peace? Of course

A monastery at its prayerful heart

Compline, allowed the great silence to start

The Island

I stood on the Island rocks

watching the ghostly outline

across the waves of Tenby town.

The sun, poured out for today

was retreating behind evening

clouds, nosediving rapidly down.

Falling quickly, beneath my eyeline,

vacating the late August sky.

Another day came to a close,

I breathed a tired, but contented sigh.

Darkness swooped down painting

the canvas surrounding

me, with a thick layer of night.

Vanquishing the last resistance

of this day’s fickle, faltering light.

I had just left the monastery church

walking on a cloud of prayer.

Having left behind my worries,

my daily fatigue placed firmly there.

Compline had just been chanted,

“oh Maker of the world we pray”

Guide uncertain footsteps,

steady faint hearts, at the

“closing of each day.”

This opening hymn

swirling around my head.

The beauty of those sung psalms,

danced within me, as my anxiety fled

Then quite suddenly.

Mysteriously, calmly.

A great silence descends.

As the monastic day ends.

Fr Patrick Brennan 2020 ©