DOWSING THE CHURCH

The tutting vicar caught me rod-handed.
I showed him where the font used to stand
hundreds of years ago.

“I fear,” he said, “I can’t approve, you know,
this kind of thing. Dowsing I’ll not allow —
not in church anyhow.”

I understood there was no point explaining
how the layout of the original building
depended on dowsing a pure spring of water.
He would dismiss as fairytale my claim
that centuries of footfall left a map
of where parishioners filed to communion rail
or to the long gone stoup of holy water,
(just as, out of doors, generations
of cows have printed paths from field to dairy
which their successors follow, and beeves can still
read old drove roads trodden into the ground).
I forbore to argue that my wands could not
whisper magic, but merely magnified
the twitch of my fingers. So pocketing my rods
I held my hands away from my body a little,
intent on their invisible silent signals.

I didn’t dare describe the north-south line
of mysterious energy flung across the church
east of the entrance porch, nor did I probe
the holes punched beneath the transept windows
to let the energy fly safely out;
though I did wonder why he’d never observed them
and researched their purpose, and why his nineteenth century
restorers did not, as usually happened, stop
the airy spirit holes with plugs of stone.
The spirit hole legend is dream and fantasy,
but the throw of energy is real enough,
so I kindly spared the vicar this shocking news.

I posted a fiver into the box for Donations
and couldn’t resist adding my business card:
“THE PIED PIPER — Wells, boreholes, drains
dug or repaired; non-invasive surveys
of historical sites a speciality.”

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