“You are a poet, and poets are dangerous
to ordinary words (…) You build cathedrals
of feelings while I stand holding a single candle
trying to show you the same light.”
– M
Poetry is my attempt to capture a moment
like a photograph, like a still-frame glimpse
of beauty, even when this world can be
terrifying or tragic; there is still something
profoundly orchestrated and transcendent
if one can simply press pause and see
and know—so I try to express that, shape it,
speak it in such a way that others feel an echo
in the chambers of their being, or can see
and be in that moment, for but a moment
lose themselves on the page, within stanzas,
inside the borders of what I build
on the page.
But I never intended
to fashion walls, to enclose, to exclude, to hold
you out. You speak a benediction over us,
when you call what I build home, peace,
inside your heart, a place where you can lay down
burdens you did not know you were carrying
and this is all I ever desired, for you, for us—
a sanctuary of solidity in a wavering world,
a refuge for reflection, a monument for momentum,
a sacred space neither of us has ever known,
a holy Eucharist where we break and bleed ourselves
into one flesh before the altar of our Lord…
where Love and all that is and flows from
Love can be worshipped in thanksgiving.
Come. Come, Beloved, and speak
in the language of your silence.
It is enough.
It is good.
We need not corners of streets nor synagogues
nor to be seen by men. I will write my words
as prayers, fold your hands within my hands, hear
the spectacle of your spirit
in the sanctuary we build, together,
palm to palm,
face to face,
silent, drawing nigh
and nigher
a place to stand and love in
for a day, with darkness
and the death-hour
rounding it
