The copper dome
of this domus Dei
provides a home
where I may in silence stay.

Beyond its great doors,
a sea of candles like a hearth.
The cool marble floor
reflects the roof mosaic’s warmth.

In this vast space
my silence softly echoes
and in my vault vibrates
a secret libretto.

A-walking through a burial ground
as autumn’s bleak winds buffet me,
I hear plainchant that makes no sound
come from a church behind bare trees.

As I wade through seas of fallen leaves
that blanket tombs of fallen folk,
the whitewashed church’s lichened eaves
are loosely draped like a priestly cope.

Behind the church’s wooden door
comes silence sounding out a song.
Its words unsaid, no rigid score,
to the whirlwind this primal hymn belongs.

Well fortified by thick stone walls
a-quarried from the craggy heart
of this carved earth’s basalt halls,
this house still plays its sacred harp.

For though someday the sun will rise
above this temple’s gaping ruin,
its oaken rafters open to the skies,
there will go on the formless tune

whose notes compose creation’s tale
that’s told unwritten in lettered fire.
In my lungs I breathe the words
to join someday the hidden choir.

With that, this door did not lead inside
that bastion built for worshipping.
Her song instead had opened wide
my spirit for all this life will bring.

In the teardropped dew of golden hour
as dusk-sun dips below the edge,
an angel of bronze upon a stone bower
keeps watch as nighttime’s fingers stretch.

Across the spans of painted sky,
one by one bright sparks appear:
constellations form as portraits high,
a hunter, two bears, points on the sphere.

These starry creatures connect the dots,
parade across the firmament
and crown the angel deep in thought,
twelve stars, a wreathed encirclement.

The hunter wheels around the dome
of charcoal sky. His thrice-jeweled belt
shines out to mark him as he still roams
in pursuit of where scorpions dwelt.

Above him run two starry bears,
one’s tail-tip pointing to the north.
Though he lays his trapper‘s snares
the scorpion always hurries forth.

The angel watches the hunt go on
as it’s been since this our rock was made.
She hums her part in creation’s song
that set it all turning on time’s old lathe.

There in the shade by moonlight cast,
this angel smiles at the pageantry
of starry figures marching past
to mark her maker’s majesty.

An old man climbs into a vintage car
to smell the sweet upholstery,
caresses the steering wheel’s steel bars
and grips the gearshift **** of ivory.

He pulls the heavy door to close
it and hear its deep, dull iron clunk
that fuel-injects him with a dose
of chrome-clad metal hunks.

The streamlined car doesn’t move.
Still, it takes him on a favored trip
down a grey road well grooved
that his whitewall mind-tires firmly grip.

Its tires spin in grooves and sing
a well-pitched tune of rolling on.
Seams of concrete slabs now bring
the bumping heartbeat of this song.

His greying hairs match the road
which stretches out into his past,
leading him back in freeway flow
to a love that he’d made last.

For in a leather rumble seat
in a sleek car just like this one,
he’d kissed her hand and lips to greet
his sweetheart hunnybun.

She smiled as bright as high beams
at her motorheaded beau,
with wide eyes that stole his dreams
and made his fuel more quickly flow.

With hair like raven asphalt
framing lips in brake-light red,
in her saw he no faults,
but thanks to him, she’d end up dead

in a shattering crash
as they slid into a tree,
his youthful driving brash
and far too wild and free.

He swore to never leave
her by that bleak perditious street.
Resolved, he chose to grieve
her and keep the rumble seat.

So once a year he sits in this car.
He never drove again.
But each time it takes him far,
right to where his hunnybun had been.

Athena turned ’round her head
like a night owl on the sly
and looked up behind her
as gold Apollo crossed the sky,

riding with his four coursers’
flying gilded manes and hooves.
Their silver flanks and quarters
thunder across the earth’s blue roof.

The rhythm of their beat
stamps a lyric all their own,
blood coursing with the heat
of the sun-disk they all towed.

The she-god of the wise
observes this cloud-streaked scene,
the man-god shining out,
casting shadows ’round Athene.

Apollo’s path is sinking low
as the winter months advance.
The frost now blurs his glow
and bare forests fall into trance.

It’s in this creeping night
that Athena finds her time.
She draws her wisdom in twilight,
no need for blinding light up high.

For she shines not with a sun.
Instead she lights her own pathway.
By her craft and wits she’ll run
her own trail she blazed today.

The very last leaf of the fall
gave her level best and all
to shine as bright as she could be
and spite the winter’s hoary freeze.

There amongst the faded stems
of lavender that’s lost her lilac gems,
this leaf has nestled in a pose
that rivals summer’s crimson rose.

A leafy lantern of orange and gold
alit on silvered frosted ground a-cold
to blaze forth in her final victory:
An exit worthy of ancient histories.

In sleet and rain of Edinburgh
a cathedral rises from the deeps.
The salt of sea and old coal blur
veil her face in grey-cast sheets.

On her western pediment
within tympanum carved of stone
sits Christ triumphant and in judgement
where he calls us all to atone.

I stand before him, my head bowed
as I contemplate our shared guilt,
with mea culpas weighing on my brow
for the follies fallen man has built.

And so we’re burning Eden down
with flaming swords that we still wield
as once vast forests shrink and brown
and fallow lie once verdant fields.

Where trees once stood, smokestacks rear
their heads belching fumes up high
and in the deeps, the oceansphere’s
no more a garden for octopi.

For in this our earthly commonweal
that was a gift that’s given free
we prove that purgatory’s real
because we ourselves have made it be.

A whisper came from the carved face
to walk into this stony womb
where colored light and incense trace
a path to overcome the gloom:

Forgiveness for our many faults
comes when we change our ways.
There in this temple’s holy vault
I vow to fight Eden’s decay.

In Edinburgh I found Eden
in a vision of what can be.
For we are by no means beaten
and we can do it, you and me.