Calfaria
I push against the doorspring’s stern restraint;
it gives;
I almost tumble sideways in.
Calfaria.
The polished walnut pews’ and pulpit’s smell
competes
with musty air which hasn’t changed for days.
Crane-fly mote beams congregate in spotlit streams
from windows treble high, made active
by the air my entrance brought.
The high and stark diagonals
from right to left
reveal the nature of the space.
It’s silent but it’s full.
Below the pulpit
to our right the marble plaque,
not ‘Lest We Forget’ but ‘er cof am’:
er (so that) cof (we should remember) am
and then three fallen names,
with years filled in.
A dignity of pallid marble
faced in black.
Er, the subjunctive, like ut, for when there’s doubt.
I breathe conviction.
That the wasted dead were present as we are.
The one thing sacred is a life.
J. P. Lancaster was brought up in Barry, a coastal town in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. He was educated at St John’s College, Oxford, and Leicester University. He has then studied and taught in Canada, Wales and Scotland.
Amethyst Review 