Selworthy

Weather sleeps here,

Alighting softly on ancient gates;

Cosseting leather; percolating

Bone and shadow; distinguishing

Medieval brick.

Beyond the shaded bend the lane

Curves and rises subliminally toward

A blanched church kneeling at the crest.

Reaching it, lungs pumping, sweet draughts

Sent from the vale below, bless a breathless pilgrim.

Slipping inside, I was struck by the

Silence, a passive archaeology, quieter

Than quiet, impermeable to the soft claps

Of my sandals on the shaded stone.

On a dais sat a book of names of those

Long gone but barely long here;

Each meriting a brief deposition

Bereft of the intrinsic vistas

Embedded in the stained glass

Pillowing their memory.

What shadows knelt on hassocks indented by

Ancestral ghosts and rose with dusty knees

From murky pews, clambering into oblivion over

Grinning skulls, macabre cousins to the gnarled

Knots mocking them as they stood for communion?

What answers to whispers sent Heaven bound were

Found later, nestling on wire and mud?

What eulogies delivered amongst such

Bucolic beauty could mute the thunderous

Nothingness of their absence?

None…then neither could mine.

Through the shuttered lens of the chapel door

Exmoor, in melancholic empathy,

Mourns my leaving.

Descending the lane, I vowed to return

For their sake, not mine.