English Heaven (Poetry)

There are angels with umbrellas singing hymns, despite the rain
descending on the righteous - it's Bank Holiday again.
Streams of seraphim are jamming all the roads towards the coast,
where long traffic cone formations try the patience of the host;

and a charabanc of cherubs joins the bored, eternal queue
for the service station café and its automatic loo,
where sweet springs of living water issue everlastingly
and piped music lifts the spirit as the overflow runs free.

Newly sainted souls wait, holy, in God's flight departure lounge,
bound for Costa Paradiso if their plane gets off the ground -
named Immaculate Contraption, the epitome of grace,
fuelled by Faith in The Almighty, care of British Aerospace.

But a voice, in tones celestial, warns there'll be a slight delay,
for the runway's like a river and the weather forecasts say
an expected low depression could develop in the West
as short, intermittent showers - or a deluge, unsuppressed.

Noah hovers on a cliff top with his resurrected Ark,
while determined English spirits haunt the closed amusement park,
and Our Father, togged in wellies, leads his flock along the prom,
where the wind bites like a demon but the concert band plays on.

Brave Saint George, wrapped in a duffel, woolly halo, scarf and mitts,
with a Walkman in his pocket playing Meat Loaf's Greatest Hits,
and the tide around his ankles, paddles stalwart, undeterred
by perversities of climate, unpredictably absurd.

Hardy souls of the departed park their deck chairs on the pier,
eat damp candy floss and hot dogs, buy some useless souvenir
from the kiosk selling presents from and postcard scenes that view it
with cloudless skies, and seaside rock with Heaven stamped right through it.

For, although it's close to Purgatory, the weathered English ghost
still makes his wet migration, like a lemming, to the coast.