Ruined cathedral
There’s someone living in the haunted tower:
She sneaks in at night when the gates are locked,
Wakes every morning for a pre-dawn shower
In the spray of the sea and the breakers’ power.
It’s cold at night in the haunted tower,
It’s hard to work with the windows blocked,
And some solid citizen’s reported a sighting
Of a warm small halo of candlelight.
When the powers-that-be see the tower’s lived in,
They’ll confiscate the candles, have the doorway bricked in.
But the Spirit in Her wisdom is never going to give in –
Now She’s eyeing up the empty space in St Rule’s Tower.
Helen Evans runs two poetry projects: 'Inner Room', and 'Poems for the path ahead'. Her poems feature in Mariscat Sampler One (Mariscat Press 2024) while her debut pamphlet, Only by Flying (HappenStance Press 2015), was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award. She holds an MLitt (Distinction) in creative writing from the University of St Andrews. Places her work has appeared include The Rialto, The North, Magma, and Amethyst Review as well as in anthologies, including Coming and Going: Poems for Journeys (HappenStance Press, 2019) and Thin Places & Sacred Spaces (Amethyst Press, 2024).
Amethyst Review 