Forgotten

You are forgotten people of forgotten gods.
You live between the dawn and the first ray of the sunrise,
Between the breath of wind and the briefest movement of a leaf,
Deep between the planting and the first glimpse of the shoot.

You are forgotten people of forgotten gods.
You are the ruined temple in which we wish to dwell,
We have a use for every scarred and fractured part of you.
What need have we of perfect shrines and shining golden statues
When the mountains and the meadows and the rivers are our playground?
But there is not a sanctuary like you in all the world.

You are forgotten people of forgotten gods.
You are our hands and feet in the hidden, buried places.
You are our priests to people abandoned to the darkness,
To the displaced and the destitute, the lost and the forgotten,
In the shopfronts under blankets, in the crumbling council towers,
And at midnight in the dark, deserted station, going nowhere.

You are forgotten people of forgotten gods.
In the provinces forgotten, in the lands neglected, missing,
In the shifting sands, the inconsistent coastlines of the sea shore,
In the flooded fields where farmers wait to start again from nothing,
In the hedgerows of the city and along the buried rivers.
You are forgotten people of forgotten gods.

© Naomi Jacobs, 2014