'Lead Us Not...' (I.P.)

An unmarked, wooden cross; a tiny grave –
freshly dug. No tributes, save a bunch
of windflowers, tied with fraying string.
Fog comes down, thick, and fast, up here
in the churchyard on the moor. At first light –
they begin their search; Concepta, and Father John
gone missing; “Speaks for itself, if you ask me.”
Nobody did, but they said it, anyway.

They found their bodies ‘neath the ‘lightning tree’,
or so folk called it, since the storm of a year ago
last March; a charred, forked trunk – its sole remains,
etching a ‘V’ sign on the sky. And in his cold-hands
lectern, a bible, and a note. “Forgive me, Lord, but
I’ve lost my way...somewhere between, ‘Our Father’
and ‘Lead us not into temptation...’. If loving is a sin,
then I am guilty, but not so, she...nor our son. In
God’s name, is this what you had in mind, when
you said, “Suffer little children to come unto me?”