Free Range Chickster

NUNS ONCE SLEPT HERE

The pale stone walls are three feet thick,

nuns once slept here.

Sliding out of their Spartan beds at dawn in the brutal cold mornings.

 and walking to pray

crosses at their empty breasts.  

I have no such challenges, warm duvets and heat pumps protect me from these harsh realities.

I cannot even imagine the life of a nun with my protestant indulgence and secular perspectives.

My soft days weak.

My gin and tonics strong. 

I am alone here,

a strange quirk of fate leading me to a monastery turned inside out to make a hotel with no guests.

Too spooky for most I suppose.

But I like this solid solitary place uncannily placed in deep countryside

with spring breaking out all around the edges.

The daffodils growing with momentary promise and lush yellowness,

heads to the sky.

They don’t bend their heads like me, sorrow turning the sun chilled.

They don’t know the nuns have gone and there is only me,

heathen and infidel to witness the splendour.

I sit in my cushioned room and write long tortured poems about my broken heart and my withering life.

What was I thinking of?

The life of a nun makes perfect sense here, the life without inward outward messy pulsating pressure.

Just the stone wall and the cross at your breast.