Untitled
Though
we stood, delegates, in the red spot, though I
boxed
under the weight of glances, those glassy eyed saints
penetrating
soul and skin from frescoes, and later
traced
the golden arches that interwove
every
crevice like a great seeping parasite—
still
I never found God.
Ten
minutes in Saint Ignatius, stoked in glory
and
I couldn’t stop comparing it to the Duomo.
When,
in our Spoleto town, the spiny pins
punched
holes through the stony skulls of cherubs
and
the tiles danced in dimmed red, echoed song,
even
in the glare of Lippi’s guilt, I watched
a
hand of intimacy unfold.
Living
for five weeks in the old country,
where
every soul has grown and known the quaint
qualities
of Christ etched in concrete walls
and
crumbling bell towers, I wonder, recurring,
if
it could be my spirit missing.
In
Gubbio, every street doused in a majestic
grayscale,
I tugged my empty knapsack closer
and
drifted, hotel-bound, to wait out dinner.
The
bedroom, neat, but the bathroom drowned
in
clean white tile, soap dish to bidet while the ceiling:
a
top-turned wave of sterile seafoam.
After
dinner, covered in the thick beads of paint
poured
from the still swirling, still dark sky,
I
longed for color. The pop of bright. That open
amenity
where, if I sprawled out along the floor,
I
could stare into the endless churn of steady ocean.
I
showered, and just before climbing out I glanced
out
the sliver of window grooved above the spicket,
that
tumbling expanse of Gubbio that offered, bold-faced,
the
all-seeing presence of God: a cathedral cross
that
peered, omniscient, into the bathroom.
In
another church, this one sporting the pickled carcass
of
Saint Ubaldo, I took a pew and traced thought
to
yesterday, that bathroom: the blue-green like a filthy
well,
water lined with algae, mold. What a vision then,
that
cross that broke through, vast and pure,
from
the bottom of that roiling hue, encased in glass,
a
shrine and me, half-naked in a bath towel—
the
sole attendant. A man lifts beside me, crosses himself
before
he picks through the aisles to pay respects.
I
shut my eyes, afraid to meet his gaze, and in the wooden
seat
I bow my head to remember how to pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment