Wandering from Faith

How do I confess
that recently I sat in church
below a rainbow flag and hoped
that somehow God would now make sense?

I’m always journeying from faith,
am never quite there because
the dread hand of Creation looms
and testifies to me
that no Creator ever was,
it’s all just wind and rain, chaos.

But until I die there’ll be
a place in my heart for an English church
with that uniquely English air,
of understated sprays of dried flowers,
a calming light at old windows,
a stained pieta of the Lord
presented as a lamb in Mary’s arms,
above the recess in the floor
where baptisms occur.

I like to think, maybe,
that if the personality survives,
I’ll see two doors open
and be fourteen again,
drinking barley water in
the foyer with the hym books as
the light of that pieta falls,
and calms the cushioned pews.