All Saints

A stone church tough as a knuckle.

Squat in the eloquent sunlight,

its tower thumbs the ether

with insolence. The transept

hunkers like a big-shouldered toad,

the slate roof shines with confidence,

the apse is the rump of a dwarf.

The famous architect enlisted

to plan this monument suffered

over drawings, and coughed a cough

that blazed with a rapt blue flame.

Now in the late summer glare

the intersecting lines hurt me,

hurt my disbelief the way shame

hurts the average child, the one

who’s halfway dutiful at school

but skimps on his chores at home.

Walking around the church,

beginning on the shady north side

where an abstract garden sculpture

prods and deflates the humid air,

I keep a safe distance from the faux

medieval bulk, more Romanesque

than Gothic. The colonnade loggia

shelters two rectangular windows.

Elsewhere, narrow pointed tracery

stained-glass lights, heavily framed,

rebut the slightest glimpse inside.

The curved but featureless rear

offers no grip on the cosmos,

so I proceed to the sunny view

from the south. Now the whole church

looks feline, crouched and alert

for curious, faithless souls like me.

I won’t tempt its great appetite                           

by stepping into the gloomy nave.                                      

 

With a wave and hello to the priest,

or priestess, trim in blue linen,

I dodge past the buttressed façade

with its tomblike entry and skip

down the walk, across the highway.

But I still feel the breath of hymnals

breezing after me, brown tones

eager to enlist my scratchy tenor

in homage to the grave unknown.

Believe and Believe

Harrisville’s square brick houses

sun themselves like Renoir nudes.

Summer’s fading. Cricket re-tune

in the graveyard beside the pond.

A pair of white-haired women

canoe-race each other,

paddling so hard the water hurts.

I lie in the grass, risking ticks,

and watch the sky do nothing

but indulge its favorite blue.

You with your pearly religion

would mentally pioneer that space

with balloon-shaped benevolence

sure to offend normal Christians.

You’d postulate nuclear spirit

ripened over the years to a fine

hard gloss. Back on my feet

before I sink into the lichen

I wander back to browse among

the mill buildings braced on slopes

rolling toward Monadnock. A brook

tumbles one step at a time

toward a lake where growling boats

drag skiers to their doom. You’d laugh

as they tumble in prismatic spray,

dunking in bottom-feeder depth.

Whatever I say in defense of space

eroded by ancestral glaciers

applies to your right to believe

and believe. The hard brick houses

track the light like sundials. We’d live

a little unhappily here,

the winters shaped like bell jars;          

but when loons set the pond ringing

your imaginary benevolence

would apply, and the warmth

of sun on brick would penetrate

with a gold opulence you’d lather

all over yourself till you shine.