Used to walk around in leather

earthen crewel powdering flagstones

diseased traffic

exchanging whispers

 

They had a rectory garden

shaped like the olde cross

with helices emanating 

from its prismatic centre

 

Unpainted benches

intimate a frangible diadem

-lolled neath spires of auburn and jade

 

The church bell’s terse, metered prose

beyond rumpled wainscoting 

deciduous flora

mouthed in a turbulence of chimes

held the ear as if by fetters

 

Darning Time round their lone orbit

hemming the quilted grass

advancing in pairs

robed men trace

gullies of iron

 

From blithe hollows

whom eulogize the Earth

with tremulous ablutions

unspoken murals

invoke ebullient hermitage

 

They pass among sophic boughs

mantic spines of luminosity

 

They graze demurely

chiding the lascivious heat

guided by song.

 

— Jason Alan Wilkinson