We tent our fingers
to make a cathedral.
This is how it’s always been
done—how a whisper
between two palms
becomes an architecture
we can’t fit into
our mouths. We hear
words like nave
and remember shoveling
piles of tulips into
a burnt-out flatbed.
An old man says
cupola, and I think
of knotty loaves
of rye stacked
like cordwood
in the baker’s pantry.
I dream of a church’s
unfinished dome
squinting upward
like the battered eye-socket
of a bare-knuckle boxer.
Every dream is its own
kind of shaky cathedral—
joists and vaults bracing
it against the weight
of another morning
invoked against us.
There’s a cathedral
built from the leg bones
of draft horses and saints.
A cathedral of birds
scaffolding the sky.
A cathedral of bodies
opening to each other
on beds smooth as altars.
A cathedral of hands
unbuttoning the skin
of every prayer
within reach.
from Litany for the CityFind it in the library
Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd 2012
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of BOA Editions LTD.
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