summer concert

Summer Concert.


Early June that year had turned very hot
the evening concert at the old church was
packed with moist humanity, perspiration
from the public and musicians ran with
equal pace, a river ankle deep, seeped
down cracks in the stone floor down to
the crypt where bones of bishops rested.

Dormant souls awoke, arose and floated up
amongst us as an unseen miasma, a sharp
observer, say, a cat would have sensed them
and alarmed run off. When Handel’s Messiah
last note hung over us, the air stirred candle
lights blew themselves out, a breeze from
the open door? Mystified and silent we left.

Their souls had woken too early from slumber
and loath returning to the crypt where they
were supposed to stay for ten generations,
before taken abode in a newborn child. Lost
now they drifted about but found a maternity
hospital. That year more unsmiling babies than
normal was born in our town.