David MurphyChurch Bell
The air’s dead in the cemetery.
Unmoving, the Spanish moss drapes
like monks’ robes in a monastery
in that gliding Reaper’s shape.
Live oaks stand as still as lead.
A sound. Through glossed air comes a knell:
sliding like glaze, sticking like dread,
conducting a new soul to its stone cell.
Revelers swing round lamp posts;
snow flakes swirl through the air;
street lamps cast golden circles;
church bells sound in the square.
We spent the last penny in our pockets
on a drink we shared in the bar;
now night has cloaked us in darkness;
the city lights are glimmering stars.
Warehouses are shut and forbidding;
a train stops with a screech and a hiss.
We stand by the cold quick river;
I brush snow from your cheek and we kiss.
This old American town tonight
was never once so bright by day;
the cruel agonies that color our lives
have faded to a harmless grey.
In the churchyard the graves are cracked and crooked;
it’s where friends and family lay remembered;
all their smiles and laughs still treasured
on this snowy twenty-fourth December.
We’d keep the parlor lit by soft light;
while music played, shadows danced on the wall.
I knew the good times could never last forever;
I just never knew how quickly they could fall.
But night brings charming dreams anew,
and when dawn comes they’re with me still;
I’ll share them with you this Christmas Day;
we’ll let hope shepherd us, come whatever will.
The Enchanted Tomb
There once was an enchanted tomb
Which rose from a graveyard’s gloom
And it caused great delight
When it flew through the night
Before the bright shining white moon.
The Blind Witch
There once was a witch who could fly
But she was blind in both of her eyes
She flew with a cane made of bone
That was as white as sea foam
And she was at ease in the darkest of skies.
The Rainbow’s End
There once was a rainbow’s end
Which leprechauns did diligently tend
They planted a garden of gold coins
That any man could purloin
If they could but find where that colored light did descend.
