Letters to an Unknown God
I don't know where
to lift my eyes
I seek
the old ones
hewn from stone
cathedrals built
from shared crops
and worn fingers
I am forever drawn inside
those cold stone walls
the worn tiled mysteries
secret passages
no commoner
is allowed
to enter
as though we need secrets
on pages to initiate us
as though birth and souls
are not initiation enough
I search the inner highest point
surrounded in gold and turquoise
as a renaissance sky
for the pure white dove
with an olive branch
painted in the pinnacle
the angels with
the most battered wings
have worked the hardest
to intervene in our destruction
the pristine golden-winged ones
mostly keep to the other side
and sing the hallelujahs
of home coming
with a loftiness
I forget to believe in
teach me to love
and I will hand you my
ungloved fear
my knees were worn
at twelve years old
in a checkered skirt
in Catholic colors
and I cut a hole in the lower
left front and sewed on a patch
of two smiling orange mushrooms
and pleaded my case
by saying: look, there was a hole!
it was the independence I needed
a mushroom on the skirt
of the catholic poet
who wasn't allowed entry
and was born initiated
and always knew
those words
I carry the doves inside
my own cathedral
and only trust the ones
that trace a white
Holy Spirit in the domes
and still I don't know
who to pray to
to the dove in my heart?
to the ones who carry black leather
books with red silk page ribbons
in a language I was never taught?
do I trust my own battered wings
or sing to the golden ones
who always smile and wait?
and what does it matter
because when that moment comes
they WILL sing me home
this light
this light that sings itself
how do I pray to light?
battered or whole or gold or blue
how do I offer my
empty bank account
my empty bed
my own worn hands?
