C ristendo

The wood-wrought doors were portals of time. Outside was tropic sidewalk lawn. Inside was— unspeakable.

Stripped of the white noise of modernity, richly inlaid with jeweled light, a roof of night. Gothic. Beautiful. It is terrifying, alone. Just you and God and your ghosts.

Too frightened to kneel you prayed with a hand on the door and fled

to a papyrus gargoyle garden in a nook of an arch-laden passage.

There is a water-fountain bleeding into the wall. The walk is salted and thirsty. Drink greedily. Trust the water.

Poetry 53