Salt and Light

 

Lofty and proud, the mighty cathedral stands,

grandly waits for its faithful servants

(more on fine days - they're not exactly fervent).

Tourists chatter in, grow quiet in its shadowed womb,

some trace vanishing points among the tombs.

A child holds his mother by the hand.

 

Distant echoes rebound through quire and transept

as the stained glass kaleidoscopes lose their spark;

the gift shop lights brighten in the growing dark

as lightning flashes unsteady strobes across the Nave,

(illuminating two hardy souls the dean is yet to save).

Morning's thunderstorm leaves the Close un-swept.

 

The bishop glances up from his ornate partners' desk,

notes the thunderclaps and ponders, once more,

if the North Tower will survive another mid-winter's roar.

Ruefully, he decides that spirits up above have had enough

of this ecclesiastic grandeur down below. “How tough

this bishopric can be,” he muses, “almost ... kafka-esque”.

 

The dean dashes in from the chapter-house, flaps his umbrella,

mutters “rain – horizontal,” then settles to his teaching task:

two souls learn they are salt and light, which they barely grasp,

but smile at “salt of the earth” and '”light of Jesus”,

as if to ask, while gazing at the leaping vaults, “Does this please us?”

The dean is rewarded in the affirmative, from alpha to omega.

 

Chris Hubbard

Perth, 2016