I revisited the angel font I described in prose below and found it led me to another sonnet, this time about the font itself and some of the paradoxes of baptism, here it is:

The Font

Old stone angels hold aloft the font
A wide womb, floating on the breath of God,
Feathered with seraph wings, lit with the swift
Bright lightening of praise, with thunder over-spread,
And under-girded with their unheard song,
Calling through water, fire, darkness, pain,
Calling us to the life for which we long,
Yearning to bring us to our birth again.

Again the breath of God is on the waters
In whose reflecting face our candles shine,
Again he draws from death the sons and daughters
For whom he bid the elements combine,
As old stone angels round a font today
Become the ones who roll the stone away

Likewise here's a new one inspired by the sixteenth-century oak table used for communion at St. Edwards

This Table

The centuries have settled on this table
Deepened the grain beneath a clean white cloth
Which bears afresh our changing elements.
Year after year of prayer, in hope and trouble,
Were poured out here and blessed and broken, both
In aching absence and in absent presence.

This table too the earth herself has given
And human hands have made. Where candle-flame
At corners burns and turns the air to light
The oak once held its branches up to heaven,
Blessing the elements which it became,
Rooting the dew and rain, branching the light.

Because another tree can bear, unbearable,
For us, the weight of Love, so can this table.

This is the prose piece that kicked off the sonnet about the font. It was written for the St. Edwards Newsletter

Divine birthing

Our fifteenth-century font is held aloft by angels. A sculptors skill has made the great stone bowl appear to float, born up on airy wings, and when, at a baptism, the font is filled with water and beside it the candle is lit then all four elements combine to witness a moment of spiritual birth. When that font was first in use the baby would have been immersed completely in the water , and drawn out of it to be placed in her mother’s arms in an act which was entirely shaped by the symbolism of birth itself. The font is the womb of the church, but the birthing into a new deeper spiritual life which begins there must also happen many times over the course of our earthly life. As we approach Christmas we think of how, in Jesus, God himself entered into our common experience of being born. On Good Friday we remember that God goes with us, walks ahead of us, through the grave and gate of death, but at Christmas we remember that God is also with us, sharing our experience of birth itself. We have all been born physically but our angel borne font reminds us that there are profound moments of re-birth still awaiting us. Perhaps Advent in which we look towards God’s own humility in letting go of heaven and coming to be born in our midst, can be a time when can pray for his help in any letting go of old life, and being born in new that we know we still have to do. We can pray that as those outward angels hold the weight of the stone font so God’s holy angels will help us bear or burdens, but also help us let them go, float them away on the waters of his spirit so that we too can be born to life in a new way for him, as he was for us, on Christmas day. I have tried to put some of these thoughts and prayers into this advent sonnet:

Finally here's a little lyric I wrote for the Girton poetry group when we set one another the theme: "Men, women, It'll never work!"

The Daily Planet

All day the noise of battle rolls,
The skirmishes and wars,
What peace or treaty can there be
Between two worlds like ours?

Could I be lost in Venus,
Could you be found in Mars,
Then I might search your tender wounds
And you my battle scars,
Then you might pull me from my sphere
Or fall to me from yours,
Were I, perchance, in Venus
And you, perhaps, in Mars.

What wary orbits we must keep
Around our dying sun,
Falling towards the verge of sleep
When all our wars are done,
Falling towards the verge of sleep
Where, lying side by side,
The angels of our planets weep
To see two worlds collide.

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