Friends’ Meeting House Pakefield

Poem by Patricia Peters

Too small to be called a hall
a house in an overgrown garden,
where old horizontal slabs
hold faint names of the long dead.

Enter by a weary iron gate
there’s a funeral of a child
mourners in long black
bonnets and tall hats.
Two pence to dig the grave
the Suffolk clay is still wet.

Old Friends jostle for places in the Meeting house
I feel their presence as we sit in silence for an hour.
I see their shapes in a packed translucent movie.
Hundreds mingle, overlapping in the spaces above
floating on the ceiling, squeezing between the living
spirits, phantoms, dead, untouchable but present.

This Sunday those living pray, meditate or rehearse old hurts
minds wander off to private and unimportant places
most close their eyes, a few to sleep.
Those spirits with knowing look on
perhaps smiling, shaking their heads in disbelief.
Even though they read our thoughts
they still ‘Hold us in the Light’.
And as Quakers they remain passive, silent.

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