On Dunino’s Kirk
A path leads to Dunino’s Kirk,
Overgrown with branches
trying to pull you back,
You can travel by the main road, of course,
But it seems harder to reach the Kirk that way.
It is a wee place of piled stones
On foundations laid eight hundred years ago,
Before we were even conceived.
The stones are still older.
A Druid site was here I’m told
Before the Christians came
The Stones remember them still
Those cruel sons of nature.
Their stones stand now in the Kirk wall
Incised with Celtic crosses,
Sanctified with baptismal water,
Long since returned to the earth.
The sanctuary remembers its lost saints
With broken notches in the facing wall
Opposite the prayer desk
Knox’s faithful sons stand in inscribed rows.
Its current son goes about in kilt and sporran
With a dirk in his sock.
He is a Scot to the skin
Even under his ministerial robes.
It is now past four hundred years
Since men first drank at the Reformer’s Well.
The Kirk has stood and spoke its gospel
To those rude farmers.
It is the village Kirk.
It will not grow.
It will not die.
It is content to be faithful.
~ L. Spencer Spaulding