Holy Trinity Church

a Colchester poem

The darkness tends
the boughs of time
until they weaken,
snap, and die.

The crooked graves
are nested in
their slanted bit
of grazing ground.

Higher than the concrete paths
encircling, squaring
the church, they lean
like old, forgotten lives.

Modernity has crept
and sealed the old religion like
a wild beast of Africa
inside a London zoo.

When morning comes
they'll still be there,
the graves and foliage,
a withered aunt in your front room.

The darkness comes, however;
and tends the boughs of time
until they weaken,
snap, and die.