One is One, and All Alone (IP)

An unmarked, wooden cross; a grave –
freshly dug. No tributes, save a bunch
of windflowers, tied with fraying string.
Fog comes down, thick and fast, up here
in the churchyard on the moor.

At first light – they begin their search;
Father John’s gone missing. ‘Fishy
business, him and Ellie May, if you ask me...’
Only nobody did, but they say it, anyway.

They found him; hanging from the ‘lightning tree’,
or so they called it since the big storm
of a year ago last June; a charred, forked trunk,
all that remained, making a ‘V’ sign at the sky...

and in his cold-hands lectern, a bible and a note.
“Seems I’ve lost the plot, Lord...Somewhere
between ‘Our Father’... and ‘Amen’.”
Carries on the wind, an infant's
whimpering cries.