HANGING FROM THE RAFTERS                                                                

An Irish band was over to open the Festival;

first visit for us to St Alban’s church – not sure

why we’d always passed by, so much missed:

vast arched ceiling, simple, revealing

rafters high enough to remind us all that

men once worked there, close to the heavens,

to set them, make them fast, to bear the

sombre-slated roofs and steeple, moving

closer, slowly, to their god, if that’s not

too much presumption. But I’d have prayed.

 

Heavy doors slammed shut, the clunk of metal

echoing all round, we were together with the band;

no sound save for the dying vibrato of the latch,

mixed with the tuning of strings and

the wake-up stretches of an old accordion.

They knew each other more than well: clear

chiming bells rung in the sunshine of those keys

promising a sound that would be offered,

just the once, there, that night, in that place of worship

that blessed the aural feast and called it holy.

 

Two guitars broke the bread and shared it with

a hungry crowd while violins poured out wine

and mixed it with the blood of those who drank;

then the accordion’s gentle bellows blew

lightened bodies up to the vaulted view where they

hovered and shivered, waiting. And when the voice

joined and flew up like an arrow we opened our chests

and, arms outstretched, received it deep inside; and,

with an eye on a wooden cross just behind the band, we

hung from the rafters, thieves in attendance.