named bench · ii · chapel porch
A single course of limestone built into the porch wall, four feet long, two centuries old at least. The slab is worn into a shallow dish from one end to the other — not the deep groove of a single sitter but the long average of many. The arch above keeps the rain off three-quarters of it. The corner nearest the door is the dry corner. The corner nearest the lane is not.
It overlooks nothing in particular: the porch flags, the inner door of the chapel, the boot-scraper, the small brass plate that names what the porch lamp was given for. Beyond the porch arch, in season, the line of yew and the rooks coming home over the overhang. The lamp comes on of its own at the hour the verger sets and goes off at his hour also; you do not know the hour by clock, only by lamp.
It is sat on by latecomers waiting for a verse to end, by mourners who could not stay inside, by the walker who has come the wrong distance in the rain. They think, mostly, that they are early or late and that the difference is smaller than they were taught. The chapel key hangs on a nail just inside the door, in plain sight of anyone sitting here.
field-note the slab is warmer than the wall in the morning, colder than the wall by night. it remembers the day a little longer than the stone it rests on.