two nuns

                                            (exphrasis on photo)

They walk at the same pace
Pious gait, robed and curbed
With papery thighs
Brushing together
No blood in the membranes
That cuddle the nerves.

Wearing haloes of cotton,
Starched and encasing
Humble, bent heads that
Float past the graves, in the
Cemetery’s autumn, they
Await winter days.

The coming of stillness and
Inevitable snow: they
Stroll past the frozen
Lull of the tombs
With crucifix stones
Suggestively posing -
Narrow-hipped, broad-shouldered
Immaculately groomed.

Adorning the beds of the
Experienced dead, whose
Bodies are rotting
Deep-down in their boxes
Meeting their maker in
Repentant flesh-shreds.

And the bodies of women
Hewn by the hardness of
Life without weakness and
Beds without bodies, they
Seem as if cut-out, white
Warmth  in the negative

Burnt out of paper, out of
Starched, theatre fabric.
Upright and solid, like
Glary, square reams, but
Small so small, beneath the
Branches and leaves, going
Gold in the season, turning
Yellow-sallow pale.