A Poem: Women's Prayer Group, Coventry

I'm posting this poem from my second poetry collection, Boudicca & Co. (Salt Publishing), in response to a conversation on Twitter today with a friend who has just visited Coventry Cathedral. 

The photo (left) was not taken at Coventry, but at Flecknoe Church, Warwickshire. I don't have any shots of my own of the glorious interior of Coventry Cathedral, so chose this to accompany my poem instead. 

This is one of those 'true' poems in that I did once belong to a prayer group that met in an upper room at the Deanery next to Coventry Cathedral. I no longer do such foolish things, but I still like the poem.

I wonder if anyone ever fixed that clock ...

Women’s Prayer Group, Coventry

The clock on the deanery mantelpiece

has stopped. Outside, a spire

is all that’s left

of our medieval cathedral, burnt out

by fire bombs in the war.

Our group (there are usually eight

or nine of us) meets

each Wednesday for prayer and supper

in an upper room. Here, we set 

such ordinary things as childcare, husbands –

our daily bread – 

against St. Paul’s teachings. How much

should we give to the church?

How much to the poor?

We struggle for words or bore each other

with pettiness. Yet each week

we pray and each week

the clock tells us the same thing: look up!

Bombs are still falling here,

their silent detonations

poised a finger’s-breadth above each head,

held off by prayer.