Day: October 26, 2021

Abbey Steps

How my heart sings

I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores
See the Abbey ruins on the cliff
I can’t climb those steep steps any more

The whip of salty sea, the shells, the lore
The  old town with its alleys and its fish
I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores

We heard the seagulls shrieking, Jesus rose
We were in a cottage but in fact
I  won’t climb  those abbey steps no more

In my mind I find an unmarked door
A dream comes by,  who  whipped my tender flesh?
I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores

Fish don’t die like sheep in abbatoirs
But yet it must gruesome so to thrash
I can’t climb those steep steps any more

I don’t like eating fish,I hate their whiff
It makes me conscious of my father’s death
I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores
Who can’t climb those Abbey…

View original post 3 more words

The Imagined Abbey 2

How my heart sings

The knobbled grassy tussocks we walked on

May  be the swelling graves of monks, derided, gone.
The vertical  calls out in one high wall
A  fiery blackbird makes the final call.

The  plainchant  praising  G-d   has charged the air
For  us who don’t entomb our inner ear
The sacred music floats away like leaves
Bewitched and married by an autumn breeze

We stood in silence, viscerally stunned
The river was as clear  as love’s demands
And still, in my mind’s eye, I see that stream
I  am  held by the imagined Abbey’ in shared dreams

An elegiac moment caught in words
Entranced by symbols  like the darting birds

View original post