Church

The empty church was a weekday ghost.

There was a silence in the pews, a dim distance

between door and altar, a vast void of light

between the groaning wooden porch and humming altar flame,

no holy hands turning pious pages,

making signs of the cross, and the airy

vestibules without whispered prayers.

When men and women fled the vaulted halls

of the cathedral, when they closed

the virgin’s eyes, so that she would no longer

bleed miracles, and covered up the tabernacle

in dusty burlap cloth, the gleaming

rainbow light cupped in leaded panes

died, the eyes of apostles and saints

no longer gazed down their prayers

on the ghostly congregation.

What remained was the thick brown backs of idle wooden pews

kneeling before the whispering altar, the silent white marble

and the crackle of candle fat.

Nothing existed without the intoning

benediction of Father Paul,

without the man in weary collared cloth

Nothing was left but the empty belly collection box

and the stone font gone dry, unfingered,

like a smooth and thirsty rock

too weak to cry for water,

a far flung fossil

under the loneliness of deep desert rock.