All Saints, All Souls

All Saints, All Souls

Sorrel Shamel-Wood

It was a blustery Halloween night,
The big oak fell and took down the power line,
Plunged the village back to 1809:
The church is dimly lit by candlelight.
It’s been six months since Ernie died, but now
As the darkness of winter encroaches
We realise that only Ernie knew how
To wind back the time on the tower clock.
His pew, front left, remains empty, still.
Little Mollie, in a red velvet dress
Lights a big, white candle for her grandad.
Yesterday, Angela asked me, “Reverend,
How do I forgive the unforgivable?
I saw the knife through the bars of my cot
When I was a little girl.” I don’t know.
I don’t know why, in Nineteen-seventy,
The car caught fire on the way to the wedding,
Why Meg lost both her parents in three months
And if her father falling overboard
Was really an accident. I don’t know
How we will afford to pay the parish share,
How much longer clergy will have pensions,
What to do with the weighty secrets
Piling up silently inside my soul. 

---

Sorrel Shamel-Wood
Poet & Priest

Sorrel is a Church of England priest in Oxford, UK. Her poems have recently been published in Young Anglican Theology and the Journal of Theology in Scotland. She blogs at: likestarsintheworld.wordpress.com. 

 Photography by Jonas Jaeken