On the Occasion of Being Alone in Westminster Abbey

An elegy about immortality

Through dusty mists of time

I stroll among the greystone pillars

that lift the cathedraled, distant ceiling

upward, almost beyond my human sight,

toward the heavens,

and toward the heaven beyond.

 

Through the many, dappled colored lights

that paint holy pictures on my eyes,

I walk with momentary steps

as if each a prayer conducted

in reverent reluctance.

 

Bathed in the hush of angels, the angels come and gone,

now but statuary of beliefs

from a world now come and gone,

I find my soul staggering,

quivering, at the possibility of it still yet being true.

 

They stop me, these ancient recollections

they pause me in my breath,

as I listen upon these stones

for the footsteps of holy men not quite gone,

and for the echoes of their immortality.