Winter churchyard

I have been working on some poems recently as a kind of limbering exercise before I get back to the book I am avoiding writing! A bit rough and ready but here it is  - not only T. Gray got to chill his backside in a churchyard in contemplation of greater things.
​Made me wonder, in a electronic age, when all things are filed in the cumulus nimbus  - will we all end with the press of the delete button!

---

Winter Churchyard

They buried kings of little kingdoms here once,
And then centuries of peasants,
Yeoman, all countryfolk,
Made equal in the rotting clay,
Until the rising of the common word,
Brought on weathered purple stone
The single word biographies of
Curate, wife, child and parishioner
Of Jacob, Bessy, Seth and James
Given a temporary glimpse of immortality.
 
Such as this might have lingered in the thoughts
Of the unexpected rows of airmen,
Who fell from the clouds to lie,
In rows of white cross uniforms,
Still on duty, still on parade,
By the tumbling wall.
 
I sat upon the memorial bench
​Watching the light of the long-shadowed
Winter afternoon,
As it sparkled on the frosted grass,
And played upon the old church wall,
Against the face of the curious knight above the door,
Whose rusty sword, blunt with age,
Is no guardian of truth or desire,
Or that which should remain.