Received but not compelled,
I presented myself with the others.
No missals tendered, nor withheld
Some riffled through them to incant
into the dark. Coughing, shuffling brothers
sat themselves below. We watched aslant.

From silence, words started - incoherence
In the balcony, we did not chant.
The weighted hymns stayed low and belled.
Obscure arising, slipstreams of spirants

Grey-blue eyes
capture photons
scattered from your form.

Cool skin
senses infra-red
feeling warm.

And tho our atoms
are mostly space

when we embrace
we do not merge
like ghostly wraiths.

Our attraction
may be impulsive

yet our electrons
remain repulsive.

I came upon a house today,
though most of it had gone away,
and left behind its mossy bones
of listing piers and cracked hearth stones.

So I took a pause for pondering
in midst of random woodland wandering
to think of those who once lived there
where none go now but deer and hare.

My gaze took in a lonesome hollow
and found that it was drawn to follow
up the course of a clear spring
that issued from a small stone ring.