While putting the finishing touches to my own 2019 Advent book, it has been a joy to pick up my copy of Malcolm Guite’s wonderful Waiting on the Word and begin again the daily readings of poetry, elucidated by the thoughts of a great poet.

The first few poems in the book have to do with looking; in particular George Herbert’s The Glance and Christina Rossetti’s beautiful Advent Sunday, with its chiastic structure full of reflected looks, mirrors and eyes.

This reminded me of the following poem that I wrote a few years ago (one from the Drawn From Words booklet) which seems especially appropriate, given that the working title of the book I’m completing at the moment is Image of the Invisible.

See

Now we see only
through a prism, and dimly:
one day, face to face.

Prisms fracture light.
One true beam is divided
into slits and stripes

diverse directions
turning and intersecting
broken in spectrum.

In this web of light
image of the hidden God
catch me in your truth.