Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The OtherThere are nights that are so still
I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic,
rising and falling, rising and falling,
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.
R. S. Thomas
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