I AM writing this on St Francis’s Day — sadly, not in Assisi, nor, even, in one of the English friaries I know and love in Northumberland or Dorset. I am, in fact, in a coffee shop in Oklahoma City, on a poetry-reading and lecture tour. But it is as good a place as any to remember Francis with thanksgiving; for, if he were here, he would be mirroring Christ and pouring his unconditional love out into the streets of Oklahoma as readily and as fruitfully as he did on the highways and byways of Umbria.

In fact, on St Francis’s Day, I often imagine the saint walking into whatever room, or along whatever street, where I happen to find myself. I imagine what he would see, to whom he would give his attention, to whom he would want to draw my attention. I need imagine that for only a minute or two, and I suddenly have a new perspective: challenging, certainly, but also, always, refreshing.

This habit of actively imagining Francis happening in on some contemporary scene goes back to a dream that I had many years ago, when I was a tertiary in the Society of St Francis. I was telling the older tertiary who was mentoring me that I would find it hard to get to some of the evening or weekend meetings because I was gigging with my band, or solo with my “songs and sonnets”.

I wondered whether perhaps I should cut down on the gigs, so as to attend the meetings. “Not at all,” he said. “Francis wanted to be a troubadour, and, in many ways that is what he became: a troubadour of divine rather than just courtly love. Just find a way to remember Francis at your gigs.”

I did that, and then, one night, a few years later, I had a dream in which Francis did literally show up in the pub I had been playing in, his habit now a long-sleeved hoodie, but in his hands I glimpsed the stigmata. Out of that dream came a sonnet, which, appropriately enough, I also turned into a song, so that I could occasionally play it in pubs.

St Francis Drops in on My Gig

I didn’t think I’d find you in this place,
I guess you must have slipped in at the back,
I’m lifting my guitar out of its case,
But seeing you I nearly put it back!
You smile and say that it’s your local too,
You know the ins and outs of inns like this,
The people here have hidden wounds like you,
And you have bidden them to hidden bliss.

Francis I’ve only straggled after you,
I’ve never really caught your melody,
The joy you bring when every note rings true.
But you just laugh and say: “play one for me!”
This one’s for you then, on the road once more,
The first, the last, the hard-core troubadour.

Published in After Prayer (Canterbury Press, 2019)