Revisiting St. Melaine

I walk up the nave
and the only prayer I hear
is a one year old testing the echo.

I arrest him at the transept
where light and darknesss meet.
We are the mother and child

traveling the path of light
and all who look in to the building
must consider us,

the softness of our features
despite the lithographic black and white,
the outlines of this old place

once alive with belief in the Virgin and Child,
in the full colour of gospel stories
before they were myths no one believed in.

I give back the space, a waste of time now
to explain how we fitted there all those years ago
like we belonged to celestial choirs raising the rooftop.

I am older now and that one year old
my young man, hears an echo
which brings him to a whisper

of incredulity. Darkness not darkness
to you. I see that he sees the beauty
as he walks in the nave, centred in light.