Sundays were holy days
when we must go to church.
The promise of granny’s toffee
after we’d been so good.
Then a lunch of roast chicken
on a saint’s day, if we were lucky.

The hymns still resound,
the prayers reverberate
down the years, but always
the worst:
‘Onward Christian soldiers’
Or
‘I am not worthy to gather up the crumbs from under your table’
as if we’d all been prodigal sons.

One Sunday I was a prodigal son.
I refused to go to church.
‘Was he ill?’ they asked.
‘Must be,’ they decided,
and left me at home
where I played peacefully
till they came back to find me
mysteriously recovered,
running round the garden.
The godly power of play, eh?
But I don’t think I got any of
granny’s toffee that day.