The Church I Never Entered

Sarah Law

The Church I Never Entered

stood opposite the conference hall,
its buttery Victorian-gothic walls

aspiring, still, to the indifferent sky.
Each of those three June days it waited

as I trekked from requisitioned
student room to plenary,

Come in for a while, said the sign.
I will next time: I’ll sit a minute,

light a candle, start a muttered prayer.
But every time I left it there. It

was partly that great door: fearing
I would be seen as a struggling fool.

So the three days passed –
I never ventured in from the wide road.

It glimmers now in my mind’s map;
a little gold thought in the dark.