Doubting Thomas

 

A Sunday morning of lassitude and sooty rain,

Found me pushing open the bookshop door, piqued and sniffling

At the  bastard bastard train

That had not appeared grinding

To a stuttering halt at Platform Four

To take me home.  Incurious, determined to ignore

 

The gracious smile of Mr Owen (Prop)

I reset my face to just-passing-time.

Slipped past Local History, Thriller, Art, and stopped

At Music, attracted by the embossed spine

Of ‘Ancient Hymns’, eased it out and found

Inside its antique bound

 

Cover, a luminous plate, Doric columns, plinths, a Roman arch,

And read:   ‘To Thomas, Second Prize for Diligence.

Colne Sunday School, Fourteenth of March,

Eighteen Ninety Eight.’   Poor Tom!  A modest distance

Away from First I thought, that might have left

Him thinking all his life

 

That he was destined to be second best! Being slick

And sharp, I faked a cool post-modern sigh, hoping,

Even here, to vaunt my gift for smart ironic

Conceit.  But as my fingertip slid down, tracing

The smoothness of the plate, it stopped, distinguishing friction

Where the patina had gone

 

Dissolved by what I knew had been a tear.  A simple sum;

I made Tom twenty one when the world fractured

And began to consume

Its own.  I saw the doubt, and how his footsteps faltered

Heading home, to tell them all about the Shilling.

 I sensed his odd disquiet to hear low keening

 

Through the bedroom wall that night. .And how later

,Knee-deep in mud and piss and awe

At how his god could want all this, his belief would waver

And then atomise.  I just could not withdraw

My finger from the tear, until I saw him in my mind, back

Home, now blind and deaf, all sight and sound in red and roaring black.

 

Some say epiphany is no more than a literary device,

A shortcut when plot falters and ideation fails.

I don’t know.  I guess there is no precise

Way of measuring such things.  But as I paid,

For ‘Ancient Hymns’, I knew the price was meagre,

To ditch, however, brief, my self-regarding swagger,

 

And, conciliate my self-reproach,

For ever doubting Thomas.