Shuttered

Weathered OSB doesn’t illuminate
or illumine like stained glass
Does the holy escape and dissipate
through the hole in the roof?

Or does it stay
rooted in the microscopic spaces
between the paint layers on the shiplap walls?
That was the finish in those days, you know

Other churches
(with youth and music ministers!)
beckoning?
or just sabbaths full of busy-ness?

Hockey seven days a week
with travel to Nova Scotia and PEI
Did you hear he made the rep team?
Well under 2.1 children per family anyway

Is the bell still in the belfry?
Or has it been melted down?
“Spiritual but not religious”
How long after its final clang

did the galvanized nails
from Home Hardware
penetrate the edges of the OSB
and herald new forms of worship?

A graveyard (not a cemetery)
grown over with trees
felled by the icicle-prick winds
blowing off the Miramichi

and no one
to cut them into firewood
Congregants on a different plane
with some graves still tended

but other graves left to the same fate
as the sanctuary
in which the people sang “Halleluia!”
as if there were no tomorrow