Dust motes dancing through glancing light,
refracted through stained glass windows, bright.
The smell of old pine and communion wine lingers,
wax polish and roses from grieving widows fingers.
A faint smell of incense, intense in it's nuance,
old hymn books weave their soporific fluence.
The imposing lectern, Gothic and glowering,
the Nave and Transepts, jaw dropping, towering.
The silence echoes in reverent tones,
so as not to disturb the pious bones
interred in alcoves and beneath stones
inscribed with the names of the chosen ones.
Hassock and cassock, pew, aisle and choir,
childish imaginings of brimstone and fire.
Quiet reflections in an old country church
then out to dappled sunlight through Yew, Oak and Birch.
Categories:
transepts, imagery,
Form: Rhyme
Part 1 - London's Medieval Minster
Cathedrals come, cathedrals go,
but none impresses or enthralls
(summer drought or winter snow,
sparkling springs or foggy falls)
quite like the Church of Old Saint Paul's.
Six hundred years this marvel stood,
surviving earthquakes, wars and fires:
vaulting not of stone, but wood,
with one of Europe's tallest spires,
so plainly seen from eastern shires.
The doors of transepts north and south
(the shorter "arms", that is to say)
were never closed. Each monstrous mouth
admitted strollers, night and day,
like Shakespeare, off to see a play.
But nothing lasts. All things must pass.
No permanence is ever found.
Grief follows joy. All flesh is grass.
First, the mighty spire was downed,
then the roof (by now unsound)
was razed completely to the ground.
Categories:
transepts, history,
Form: Rhyme
on confessional summer streets of city
the heat scums in like a churlish treacle
in back of the five and dime bodies drift by
cotton barely captures their hides of leather
mock they come feasting their eyes the uninspired the unenjoyed
skin like twined roe on inelegant hilltables of humping asphalt
the fullstomached and the barrenous
the stubblegaited and released obese
the adolescent chics swaddled in microshortshorts and sons and
daughters of their own walk on
sidewalks clotted with dirge
dry bubblegum bandages
and weeping condoms caked with sad and
botched hotdog stands and others hold hands
watching over out back of the fiveandime
clouds scuff in like oldtime washerwomen
scrubbing the spanknew parking meters
and all the cops are at the donut shops
notary publics down to the liquorstore
picking up twofours and molls awol from the junior high
and cocksure dudes drabbed in deadlettered sweatpants
cruising spineblown bars for commandment cheaters
in lunging games of catchascatchcan and
here
on Church Street
one young woman smiling arm in arm
with an elder mother set as a seal upon her heart
and all my transepts spires and bells
rejoice
Categories:
transepts, inspirational,
Form: Free verse