Photo by Charles Postiaux on Unsplash

 You never stepped into a church, as I was told,
but I sat with you on the pebbly step
of your garden shed,
We looked at a sunset sky, and you called
the colors, rose and purple all twined with
the wash of a watermelon paintbrush, the
only temple. “my soul recognizes him in
that sky!”
I wonder, did you really use those words
Granddad? I remember them, so perhaps they were in your soul,
and mine.
You never bought a bunch from the florist’s shop, but
brought Granny the first sprig of blossom from
a damson tree at the top of the garden.
You once talked of tulips and snowdrops, and
the old cabbage rose, each growing in the garden spot
where they chose. But you let me grow a whole package
of Calendular under the forsythia which excited my eye for
the summer.

Do you know that you lie now in the ornate and glossy oak box
with freesia and lilies in wreaths and arrangements tidily
placed on the top,
that you were lauded, and prayed for to a particular, strict
deity, and the box where you lie now sits shined upon through
deep colors of the stained glass window above the altar.