I belong to Poetry ‘Club’, I use an apostrophe because it’s not officially a club, just a group of diverse and wayward poets who meet up each month at a bar in town. They are in many ways fiercely atheistic and not overly tolerant of religion in general. I however am a Christian, so I wrote this little missive to perhaps stir them up a little. It went down well, so no harm done and no Christians were injured during the recital.

April 2026

What if I were your chaplain, though you hold no sacred creed,

Though you’ve planted in your garden no symbolic, holy seed?

I would not bring a pulpit, nor a thurible, nor a text,

I would simply ask what troubles you, then listen, quite perplexed

By the courage of your doubting, by the beauty of your no,

By the tender way you water truths that man-made scriptures grow.

What if I were your chaplain, and your fierce, unbending blight

Made a chapel of this café, where the soul may sit and write?

I would bless no bread, no wine cup, just a Guinness, black and bitter,

And I’d sit beside your silence, un-anointed, all a jitter.

When you speak of dust returning, I would say, “Yes, that is true,”

And I’d mourn with you in meter, and I’d doubt a little, too.

I would not pray out loud, my friend, nor whisper Jesus’ name,

Lest I fence your open clearing with a cross you have to claim

To impose upon your breathing. But I’d watch, and I would learn

How your atheist hands tremble, how your secular heart burns.

And perhaps that is the blessing, not the answers I don’t bring,

But the one who asks the question, and the questions that still sing.

So let me be your chaplain for a stanza, for a breath,

Where the only holy water is the laughter found in death,

Where the hymn is conversation, where the altar is a chair,

And the only thing I offer is to see you sitting there,

Not converted, not convinced, just a little less alone,

In the café of the poets, on the road they call Unknown.

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© Richard J Kirk writing as Joseph R Mason – 2026. If you want to know why, see: About Me…

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