Hymns for the Hollow

In empty churches where shadows kneel
The dust motes dance to hymns unreal
Where broken pews and silence pray
For congregation’s ghost to stay

These sacred songs without a voice
Echo through halls of absent choice
Where spiders weave their silver psalms
Across abandoned, reaching palms

The organ pipes, now rust and still
Remember songs that used to fill
These hollow spaces, now bereft
Of all the faith that time has left

Stained glass windows filter light
Through saints who guard eternal night
Their colored shadows softly fall
On nothing, no one, empty hall

The choir loft holds memories
Of voices raised in harmonies
Now only wind conducts the air
Through hymnals tattered, worse for wear

In corners where the faithful stood
The darkness feeds on solitude
While whispered prayers of long ago
Sink deeper than the depths below

The bell tower’s voice has lost its tongue
No more its bronze commands are sung
Yet something in these walls still hums
A requiem for what becomes

Of holy places left to rust
Where sacred words return to dust
And yet the hollow still contains
The echoes of forgotten strains

These hymns that haunt the empty space
Like phantom notes of fallen grace
Still sing their songs to vacant air
In answers to an absent prayer

The silence now has learned to sing
In voices that the shadows bring
A different kind of sacred sound
Where loss and longing can be found