Hymns

Seated at the back of this cathedral, where

The comers-late and comers-rare together

Waited for the final bell, chime of release,

I kindled with a blazing understanding.

-

I came here to confess my sins

When I was young, and little faults

Took grotesque shadow-shapes upon the wall

Of alabaster conscience, cast there by

The still unsullied light of innocence.

I waited for my Father in a pew,

And looked behind me often at the

Brazen, mammoth exaltation of

Great organ pipes above a gothic door.

They looked like some celestial city

Half-descending down to join the rites

Of worshippers to its own intonations -

Paleolithic whale-songs offered to

An unseen presence, closeted in gold.

-

Now, aged and clouded as I am, I feel

A burning, splendid, newfound clarity

Of how and why you fill me,

You, whose face I have not seen

In years, not since we parted ways

At close of academic year and

Launching mortarboards:

You echo in my soul’s soft caverns and

Within my marrow-tunneled bones just as

The breath of benthic bellows strums

Metallic throats into an iron tune.

You make my senses and my rounded

Solitude reverberate with

Rising, coruscating, full-bright

Hymns.