Respect

RESPECT

Below the vaulted oaken beams
Whose gaze had beheld a thousand years
Of happiness and grief
And walls painted by millennia of prayer
Sat a simple wooden casket.
A wreath
White flowers around a blood red rose
Bedecked this simple bier
Whilst haunting, ethereal music
Ebbed and flowed
Within this ancient Church
Stained colours playing fleeting imitation of life
Across flagged and time worn floor.
The Man.
His final journey begun
Now slept within the candles guttering glow
Light dancing softly from a golden cross.
A mother, gripping her first born’s hand so tightly
As if she feared he too would slip away
And leave her all alone.
The Priest,
In sombre tone, spoke softly from his allotted place
A eulogy, so eloquent
That it plucked and wounded many hearts
As he bade farewell
Too “A gentle, gentleman”
Long has flowed times river since
And life has moved, as it should
Yet within that small and ancient place
Seldom has more compassion been seen
By so many a moist eye
Of this event, I can truly swear
For long ago it was there I stood.
Within that peaceful place
It was to the man, there sleeping
I had come to say goodbye.
As a father, he always had my love
But greater even than that,
He was my friend.
And as a man
My respect.

On the anniversary of my father’s death.