Small Stone Church
You meet it unexpected through the windshield’s sleety snow,
The whitening roof of a church in looped compactness hunched
Like a pioneer caught in the weather behind a horse and plow
With his hoar hat bent to the effort, his freezing shoulders hunched.
Your headlamps brush the stones of it, still grey,
Still stones though mortared into a wall
Solid as a promised truth. Fleetingly, you see
Its understated window, ashy pale
Inversion of an inner rainbow’s fire.
And at first you think it is gone, abandoned,
As you sweep on through swamp cedar down a thinning icy road.
But it refuses extinction, keeps shape, is there,
Anchored in the heart, a cairn in the wilderness.
Roof slush.
True stone.
Guessed-at glory in the window glass.
Pennine Platform 