Some interesting context for this one! So, this poem is continuing the series that I’ve been uploading over the past few weeks of fantasy poems that are slowly expanding the worldbuilding of a project that I’ve been working on. However, this poem also takes inspiration from Worship, an entirely unrelated poem that I have also previously uploaded to the blog. It’s a sort of reimagining/extended/mixed-up version of that poem, which now fits into the bigger picture of this fantasy world, so I hope you enjoy it!
This is Worship
She tends her altar quietly,
fingers moving under candlelight,
before the moon reaches centre stage.
It is not forbidden-
G——- is so open, these days,
to devotion of any kind.
Yet private practice feels
so much more intimate,
as she clasps her hands.
Her eyelids close,
the crimson sigil still bright,
painted in lamb’s blood.
Well, if she is a lamb,
to his flock, and he is a shepherd,
of a congregation of one.
(The guidance scripture, yellowed
beyond potential imitation standards,
asked, rather politely, for lamb’s blood.)
(As her rooms are nestled above a bookshop,
overlooking the prim square of inner-city greenery
that is D— Park, a lamb was unavailable.)
The chant is a sweet nothing off her tongue,
so very sweet, as if she is kissing it
into the ear of a lover.
This is her nightly ritual, and this
is her reward: her glimpse of him:
a pleasant horned face, brilliantly red.
This night, he has no words for her,
but the pleased softness to his eyes,
the crinkle in his face; it is enough.
Her offering is only devotion,
her words the only sacrifice,
loving in their regularity.
This is worship.
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Oskar Leonard 