Rats Poem by Rory Hudson

In the corners of the church
rats are scurrying and scratching
on ancient floorboards
among the dust of ages.

They are the most faithful parishioners,
for they inhabit the church
each day of their lives
not only on Sundays, or for weddings,
christenings or funerals,
but on the days mundane
that pass in dull succession through each year
when pews are empty and the sermons
and those who heard them, long since gone.

Here they are born,
here they make love
and here they die
in generation after generation
across the centuries.

At times they sit on their haunches
sniffing anxiously the air with little pink noses
and raising little pink paws together
as if in prayer.

The rats too have their place
in this wide world.
Perhaps they interrupt your prayer
with their tiny squeaking,
but God hears their squeaking
with your prayer as one voice
crying out from this world of dust
to what lies beyond.