Confetti (or, The Woods Are My Parish Too)

Birch and beech link arms across my path.
Like bride and groom they make their lychgate shelter
while oak’s confettied leaves fly helter skelter
in the wind.  Above I hear the laughter
of squirrels sharing chestnut sacrament,
ready to give anointing from on high
to unsuspecting laity, but I
am wise to their irreverent intent
for I am, after all, their parish priest
and they, like every blade of grass, my flock.
As I process crows scatter like a prayerbook
congregation after Eucharist.
A pair of ravens pass episcopally
overhead.  They share with me the cure
of souls in this peculiar parish corner,
so filled with jubilance and melancholy
as all that lives within it strives to be
transfigured slowly into holy ground.
I pause, enraptured by this most profound
realisation.  In my mind mycelial
connections start to form, joining the roots
that flow from these parochial woods with those
of rainforest and tundra, kelp and mangrove
and all life on this fragile world, whose beauty
is sustained, renewed, depleted, every day,
transforming the ground beneath our roughshod feet
and hallowing earth’s tender skin with sweet
composted incense.  As I leave I say
a whispered benediction knowing I,
not they, have had the blessing here. I move
from sanctuary to chancel, nave, then through
the gates, and out beneath the opening sky.

© Rich Clarkson, October 2024