“Sometimes, constellations land into our veins,
illuminating their branching networks with ancient starfire.
Stop long enough for a ray of golden light
to slant through trees and trick you out of your skin.
Stay long enough for this love to catch you up.
When it finally does, turn your face to beauty and
surrender to your own weeping.
When that happens, the human skin slides off
as a luminescence lights up cascades of scales, fur,
claws, beating wings, soaring flight, slithering belly.
All that’s needed is a slant of sunlight through trees,
a subtle change in the trickling stream-flow,
to trick a human out of her familiarity,
to land even momentarily into an entirely different realm.
When that happens, nothing is ever the same again.”
Catherine Pawson
Chorlton Unitarians 