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Prelude: Leaving St Bridget’s

Came the day and the master said: ‘It’s finished,

it’s good work.’ We all stepped back to look

up for once, as the priest was always asking.

What did he see? Not the callous under squared stone

lifted, set day after day. Not grey and grit

of mortar, not scaffold and winded hoist swaying

in a cross-raising, but high blues and whites

of Our Lady, and an angels’ sky. We raised our eyes.

The master said: ‘Time to be packing the carts, then

off to the next one.’ First he let us wander

to see the whole thing, feel the others’ work:

that angle in the arrowed door, that soar

of arch over altar, ‘stone rainbow span’

as the priest described it; each frame of light

where we set eternity square. Each footstep

took us further away. One pause, to look back

at the scale of it, ship above the mill of huts,

then a bend in the lane. A stand of thinning ash

made a picket between us and our past. Four days

tramping churned roads through buffet and drench.

A Roman line to start, then a gesture of sea,

and gradually, when the sky stood back a bit,

a level of hills pegged true, like the new walls

we’d raise when we arrived, a dream in stone

built in St Mary’s name. New Latin word,

and world: ‘cathedra’.