Liz McQuilkin: ‘Red Chapel’ and ‘Regret’

Red Chapel

St Stephen’s single bell is still, its call
to worship missing from early Sunday sounds:
a car door shutting, two dogs barking, that’s all—
the porch door’s locked, the belfry’s out of bounds.

Fondly named Red Chapel, it has stood
a hundred and sixty years, perched on its knoll
of sandstone. It proffered The Word with comfort food
to christen, marry, bury, sustain, console.

Flowers in pots bedeck each second step—
wreaths of remembrance for former tranquil days—
for now the sins of father-priest entrap
the conscience of all, a societal malaise.

The church must pay the price, the bishop decreed
and neither God nor man could intercede.

Liz McQuilkin

Regret

Blind arrogance, I hear my conscience sigh,
better to stop pruning than move a nest,
those blackbird chicks did not deserve to die.

I placed their bed in a banksia bush nearby.
Featherless, blind, they squawked their bold behest
for food and warmth, I hear my conscience sigh.

At dusk, their silence seemed to signify
repleteness and a pressing need for rest.
Those blackbird chicks did not deserve to die

but the parents had abandoned them, for I
had soiled home with my hands, I was the pest.
Blind arrogance, I hear my conscience sigh.

Checking, I saw four bodies twisted awry,
almost transparent, as if by cruel jest.
Those innocents did not deserve to die.

I’m haunted by that desperation cry.
A little common sense would have addressed
such arrogance, I hear my conscience sigh—
those blackbird chicks did not deserve to die.

Liz McQuilkin