White Thursday

It gives—and she accepts a proffered hand

to walk towards the darkness, sanctified,

boasting of a virgin blackness yet to

feel the violation of earthly light,

but glowing with the whiteness of a dream

and suffused with the gleam of timelessness.

Behind the lattice screen she hears the song

of sisters rising, and your voice among

the sisters rising to a pitch of perfect peace

to dwell among the elevated vaults

built to crown the fullness of eternal

light, where stones resound to the song of child.

On this side of the veil ontology

of grace leaves behind a pale and blemished

face staring like some mute, enchanted child

as time turns into space. Seem becomes real;

the possibility of transfigured

being is now itself transfigured.

The body, in defiance turns, asserts

itself in memories of sweat and flesh,

steals itself to watch over the alone

buried deep in earthen vessels, weathered

and cracked by the malevolence of time.

The blood beats against skin, unrepentant.

She sees the life in death and death in life,

transcendence in the here, not some other

space; the beyond is in the human sphere,

on this side of the veil. Let the blood sing

louder than the choir of brides praying out

their souls from a broken dialectic.