“…for everything that lives is holy” William Blake

Tenacious flowers of golden weed grow from the cracks. No roof, no door, no pews, no treasure – does it still have a bellyful of love?

entering by the arch

a Cabbage White searches

for what it needs

high above

swifts feast

in endless blue

from an oubliette

in the abandoned ruin

crawls a ladybird

pecking together

a chaffinch couple

graze on the ancient stones

 

The church walls are blocks of yellow rock, still bearing the scrapes of the rough stone-cutting tools used to square them off. There is a bees’ nest in a hole, hectic with hovering traffic.

 

Bee City Airport

helijet entrance arch

in the broken mortar

buzz buzz buzz

the congregation ignore

blackbird’s sermon

 

The blackbird watches me with a bright black pupil rimmed with yellow. The gecko I study is also bright-eyed. A smart beetle, like my neighbour, comes from the car-wash with polished metallic bodywork. From the lean-to outside the church there’s a strangely insistent rhythm.

in the thatch

squeezing notes in unison

a choir of sparrows

in the heat of the sun

a dry font

christens everything

I’m squatting

on the altar

awed by ants

 

I feel as old as the need for rain, here with the ancient urges of birds and bees. I just sit in the ruins, with my evolutionary company.

I am a bee

I am a lizard

I am a people