Dance hall
It took a cousin to convince her
to leave the house, where nightly
she trapezed her mother’s steps
with strides of separation.
Six months knee deep into that
keen, her night of freedom had arrived
and all the hall lights were on,
winking across the valley. She’s back.
This is heeling for healing, a revolt
against her danse macabre, to move
out of time and trip over. It was this night
she finally left the house and ate rain
with lifted face. It was this night she met
her lifelong familiar who would say
you are what I always wanted.
And against the song beat, how his prophecy
roared.
Sacristy
A black gown draped damply against a
branch with its owner bathing in the water.
Returning from a dead end and a boarded up hotel
I saw the man now mid gowned.
Half-priested, it turned out. Oddly, the more
he dressed, the more he seemed exposed,
holding half the cloak up to a nipple on show.
Padre.
Trying to put him at ease I thumbed pictures
on the phone to show my collared collection.
An Easter fire, a gilded gospel, a golden stole.
Here were fishers of people, a twin set,
casting out long nets of solitude,
returning themselves to the water.
Ryan Service is a full-time priest and sometime poet based in the Midlands (UK). His work has been published in Theology, The Sociological Review, and other journals. Before training in Rome, he read English at the University of Warwick.