Stone upon individual hand-masoned stone,

feet and knee-smoothened, buckled grey

and black, each locked into the other, until

this space encloses to silence. Footsteps

outside on crunching gravel, a lawnmower,

the seasonal voices of daily doings, shimmers

within these Abbey walls. This is not a place

of escape, a running away from, but a reclamation

of what is fragile and reed swaying. This space,

beyond the border of madness and serenity,

has become necessary, else we descend into

the dark heart’s abyss where stones form, where

they crack and crumble become sterile soil, where

no seed can grow, or, if it falls, they split and wither.