Shap Abbey

It would be a very long-winded task to identify all of the things that might go to make for a perfect world but definitely two of the items on that list - and probably appearing quite near the top at that  -  would be people not starting sentences with "I had this interesting dream last night..." and then people not asking you to read their poetry.

There are more exceptions to the latter case than the former and in my Twitter timeline I would certainly include @headfirst_dom, @jerowney (aka @thehaikugirl) and @myhaikuproject in those whose poetry I enjoy.

Anyway, I wrote a poem once after I went to Shap Abbey. I was thinking earlier on that it was the only poem I've ever written that wasn't either for laughs or for another person but now I think about it, I'm embarrassed to say I was hoping to get it published in some amateur poet column that The Independent was running at the time.

Do you want to read it? Of course you don't. Here it is:

*clears throat*

Church

seen from the road
black cactus shapes against the late sun

up winding lanes, down steep hills
before us deserted
a skeleton, stone, flooded with grass

window holes, eyeless so glassless
Holy, but silent, without an echo of prayer

no breeze, candle heat sun
unseen by ghosts
we reconsecrated the ruins
with our bodies

flushed fleetingly with spirit. Then dead again

It's a lot worse than I remembered, actually. I guess I must have written it in the late nineties, so I was definitely old enough to know better.

Anyway, The Minx and I visited there, today. She sketched the abbey and I wandered about, took some photos and didn't mention my poem. And then we went here, which was ace.