The rainbow arch

 (Lindisfarne Abbey)

Those days are gone

when island children

ran over the arch

in unclad feet.

They dared the drop,

in ancestral perpetuity,

for no reason

but the vital call

of coming of age.

Now, only storms trouble

the stonework -

galing winds

rifling the mortar,

sculpting the bricks

beyond the masons' art.