Going To Mass Poem by David Cooke

I shuffled at the back
for years, and kept a truce
at home by looking
at others around me -

the prim communion faces
worn like a mask
on dutiful daughters;
or those lighters

of candles, old women,
who crooned the response
from missals and knelt
as though caged

from doubt; through
pious circumstance
each rite had refined us
in faith, but now

when the host is raised,
a tiny weightless moon,
it drifts in orbit
beyond all touch of mine.