Sunday Morning Grace
I won't say it was a glimmer in the air,
a flaw in rays from a lifting sun sifting through cattails
filled with calls of red-winged blackbirds;
words surely were not whispered by fluttering
cottonwoods up and down the shoreline
advising me to regard the light,
causing me, a sneering cynic, to stand transfixed
as if something more than chance brought me there;
or, heading home, to a church's open doors on Franklin Avenue,
its every stone, worked two centuries ago, neatly fit
each to the other and I, conspicuous outsider who fit nowhere,
to sidle up the narrow steps to the balcony;
nor am I saying it was Phillip Brunelle at the pipe organ
its thunder blasting through heavy, hewn rafters;
nor dazzling rows of stained glass;
nor the gathering of community I once distained
that shook me loose from the bone, blood,
the clotted thought of my empirical body;
I'm saying on that morning I came to know that shafts of sun,
communities of faith and of blackbirds, cattails in still water,
ancient stones, standing pipes vibrating air
into the miracle of music, glittering cottonwoods
on the shore of Cedar Lake all had their place,
fitted neatly, each to the other, beyond chance.
fitted neatly, each to the other, beyond chance.
The Church of which I write