That place of
bats & rosary beads, old & so well fingered,
Where cobwebs
draped old life & musty history lingered,
Of curlicues
& catkins, in cloisters of ivied filigreed must,
Place of early Christians, where Christ once
asked for trust.
Abandoned by
old robed men, those of secret & sealed lip,
Those who once
prayed in silence & from Holy chalice sipped,
Those grey monks
of long-gone era, now just the walking dead,
Raven upon grinning
gargoyle, where he makes his nightly bed.
Clinging to
dear life, ivy creeping & embracing sad dead walls,
God blinking
from cloisters, through the now non-existent halls,
Echoes of
silence, dripping down the cold moss covered stones,
Where graves
of long-gone saints bare only the names of bones.
The
unforgiving rats scuttle upon the old cracked, unseated pews,
While wind,
cobwebs & moonlight dance with the drops of dews,
Where moth
& man once lived side by side in old & centuried past,
Where cracking
sconces broke the silences, now only stone that lasts.
Here where
the word of God was chanted, by the silvery light of moon,
I heard within
the shadowy yews, the ancient haunting & passing tune,
Those eons echoing
within the icy winds of long-gone & marching time,
I knew then, I
had lived here & that these ruins were really & truly mine.
