A Church Somewhere

By Rowland Hughes

Featured in New Lyre Summer 2023

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A Church Somewhere 

Sitting quietly in this place 
I can almost hear dust settling on the pews. 
A preacher’s voice ebbing away inside my thoughts 
as though the space of a hundred years 
waited for me to attend this moment. 
Boarded windows are a gesture against 
the light that once fell easy on their faith. 
And where light shows through a gap in a door, 
seemingly going nowhere, 
I watch the wind pick at a spider’s web 
as it moves to the tune of a hymn I once knew. 
There is nothing of worth here, 
only the stone that waits to be salvaged 
by a night raider. 
And maybe, when they sit at the fireplace 
built from a wall of a darkened corner, 
fingers will probe the initials of a bored child, 
and they may remember that tune I once knew. 
I had forgotten the value of the silence, 
a place where, in the dust, 
I can still hear that final Amen. 

Rowland Hughes is a Welsh writer and poet. He was born, and lived until his late teens, in the Rhondda Valley, from where he still draws most of his inspiration. He worked as a Master Decorator and studied trades in the construction industry. He later became a Local Authority Assistant Surveyor. Due to ill health, he retired in 1997. In 1998, he joined a Cardiff University Creative Writing Group. He loves to observe people, places and nature, writing in bustling cafés and the confines of his writing shed.

Continue reading “A Rhondda Man’s Funeral”, “Mrs. Gummer”, Peeling Potatoes”, “Llanwonno Church”, “The Sea”, “Throwing Away the Wind” and “Tin Bath”.