Baggage

 

Here in the Abbey the night before they leave –

the blue-and-green table with wine and loaves –

the guests are scolded for the bags they’ll heave

downstairs in the morning, the too many clothes,

the too many stones from Columba’s Bay.

On the shore in the rain they’d been urged to choose,

to look hard, to live in a less encumbered way,

to discard what they could not excuse.

 

Now so much disappears into silence.

We break off a piece of bread, pass on the cup,

seeming to rest in the now so lightly

we’re almost the tremor of sea and islands,

not sure yet if we’ll be weighed down or buoyed up

by this incoming sense of what might be.