Lud’s Church.

Cracked sky and the winding stair,
A womb opening, the name in the rock,
The trees arching like fingers painting the sky.
The cloying smell of earth, of dripping moss
And ferns clinging in epiphytic disorder.
Descending into the past, into the chaos
Of superstition and beliefs, of omens,
The shadow of the cross dancing
On the sheer walls, where fragments of sun
Steal the darkness: the fortuitous path
Of the comet across the night sky,
The toadstool beneath the birch,
The cowed monk staring into the abyss
With inky pen.

Down the worn steps to the chapel in the green,
Into the sacred locus of the Great Goddess,
Where whispering oak leaves flutter
And the holly broods green and dark
With blood red berries shining as jewels:
Here for a moment savour the ethereal stillness
And breathe the air of chivalry
And revel in the wildness of pagan
silence.
Decipher the runes etched in stone and tree,
For here Hob and Herne brush the bilberry
And weave the toadskin spell about them,

As a cloak of swirling stars and old moons,
Long ago waned, their light yet trapped
In rune-like cracks and crevices about
The chanting gritstone chasm.

This is a holy place:
A sacred enclave beneath the sky,
A chapel full of curlew song,
A place of swirling hallucinogenic dreams,
Of ancient echoes and secret meetings,
A place where you confront yourself -
Your shadow,
Deep in the earth:
But when you step out on the purple flowering moor,
To the twittering and sweet lark song
You empty your head of visions and dark dreams.