In the corners of the church <br />rats are scurrying and scratching <br />on ancient floorboards <br />among the dust of ages. <br /> <br />They are the most faithful parishioners, <br />for they inhabit the church <br />each day of their lives <br />not only on Sundays, or for weddings, <br />christenings or funerals, <br />but on the days mundane <br />that pass in dull succession through each year <br />when pews are empty and the sermons <br />and those who heard them, long since gone. <br /> <br />Here they are born, <br />here they make love <br />and here they die <br />in generation after generation <br />across the centuries. <br /> <br />At times they sit on their haunches <br />sniffing anxiously the air with little pink noses <br />and raising little pink paws together <br />as if in prayer. <br /> <br />The rats too have their place <br />in this wide world. <br />Perhaps they interrupt your prayer <br />with their tiny squeaking, <br />but God hears their squeaking <br />with your prayer as one voice <br />crying out from this world of dust <br />to what lies beyond.<br /><br />Rory Hudson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rats-3/
