The meat counter

The butcher and his vicar wife

have stopped eating meat and these days

they’re agnostic at best.

Their lives revolve around Sundays,

meat and God. Let’s say grace

and tuck our serviettes in.

No faith now, but it’s too late to find

something new. They’re 58 their only option

is to persevere in what they once believed true.

Her whole congregation

used to send her Christmas cards

her whole congregation used to stop

and say hello but she doesn’t go

into the village much. No-one

rings the church bells anymore.

It’s not about the animals or environment

He just doesn’t like the texture underneath

his fingers. It feels too cold. Too real.

Of course she’s had conversations with atheists.

So many, but she’s smart and she believed

It was just this moment one day, like realising

you left your bag on the train and that was that.

There is no God, but it’s Sunday tomorrow.

I better not let anyone know that I know.

She weeps now for all those unanswered prayers.

He can’t believe all the fields of meat he’s clingfilmed

And handed across for people to eat.

It’s what happened to the man who rang the churchbells.

His letter was read out at the AGM.

‘I am crying as I write this,’ he wrote

‘but I can’t do it anymore.’