They walked together in the rain

They walked together in the rain

Arm in arm,

Two friends

Not sober and neither to be judged,

The last bus, long gone.

The darkness weighted all about them

Nailed to the ground

With tent pegs.

Only the stars looked distant

Sodium lights fizzing

Marking the way like a runway.

To keep warm, they ran

Arms outstretched, twin aeroplanes

Remembering their childhood,

Before the discovery of alcohol.

Drunken were they now

Spirits wet with laughter

Even as night closed in

Stumbling through a muddy field

They might well have been in Flanders.

Sunday suits no longer best

Shoes thick with muck and clarts,

Hearts thumping with the thrill

Of freedom.

Startled by a scarecrow

Arms outstretched

As it should be

For all the world a brutal crucifixion

A ragged christ stuck up,

Looking down

From the high ground.

Changing the nature of their adventure

Filling their wild imagined stories

Forever after.

The wind, taken from their sails

As the solemn covenant

Of velvet sky

The milken-moon

And breaking dawn,

Coalesced in hallowed memory

Haloed in deep reflection,

Every time

They chanced to remember

The night that they saw Jesus.