Our Father lives in the charged ether,
above and all around us
in splendid symmetry,
the source of life and love and healing.
The fabulous towers, the spires
and flowering tracery of organic design,
were all conceived and built by better men than us
in an age of gold.
These, the natural avenues of life
in which our ancestors sat, goodness drawn down
into those cleansing naves
where the deep organ soothed,
where we took the true medicine, giving thanks,
not to some mystery or intangible presence,
but the reality of His environment, His conduit,
His soft conversation with us
which we have – nearly all of us –
forgotten, our memory blighted, expunged,
erased, while we plod obliviously
around the stark bare stones and ruined choirs
in awe of a shell, without ever seeing the whole,
the rich truth of the past
and future’s promise
in this penurious present.

Copyright Francis 2022