I say "cathedral"
when I want to speak of
a holy place that is dark
when seen from outside
through a door and instead
turns out to be
full of light.  That’s
what a Catholic boy does
when he looks past his lapse,
back at what he once felt.

If I had been born
elsewhere, as another man,
I might instead speak of
the synagogue of Worms, Germany, called
the Rashi Shul, razed twice
and built back to God each time;
might mention
the Blue Mosque of Istanbul,
repurposed long ago
into mosque from cathedral,
and which still can sharpen
any viewer’s inhale. 

I am not any of the men
who still look to brick and mortar,
stone and glass, as a house of God.
I know there are evils buried in their foundations,
I know how the good words spoken inside them
have some times set in motion the chains, whips,
biases, murders, wars…

I am far down a highway
now, one where asphalt and desert
have opened me to spirit and light
I never dreamed of.  I am no Catholic boy,
no chosen man, no hajji any other hajjii
would recognize…

I know enough, though, to understand
that every highway starts somewhere,
and God at the beginning is God at the end,
and where there is God, even a hidden one,
even one masked by profanity,

there is always a story
worth hearing
of a journey
from someplace to
this place.

I was born
open at the joints, soft all over,
more ready to fold
than to break.

When my bones knit
at last, I was left
with lines
on the inside. 

I try to cross them
as often
as possible,
but sometimes

it’s all I can do
even to see them.
Instead, I feel my way along
the fissures in the dark.

The other day,
I came to one I’d thought
had long ago ossified
but which still gave a little

when poked, gently at first,
then more firmly, with
the now rigid length
of my outstretched index.

I forced it then, a little
at a time, until I could step
over the edges and enter
what lay beneath it.

I am still here.  I am
unable to find a light
anywhere, and I’ve stopped
seeking one. 

Instead, I sit on the floor
of a long hall.  There is an altar
at one end, smoking incense,
the sound of voices I can’t name

yet, though I am struggling
to hear them: hawk cry of a celebrant,
sobs of goosedown, breathy chanting
of others who came here before me.

Is it my imagination
or is there now some shine above me
that makes me think I can see reeds
along a riverbank

outside the margins of the hall?
I promise myself
that later,
when I’ve grown to love the dark,

I will step to that water
and float away, navigating
the hushed canyons of my bones
toward places that were peopled

before they fused, before
I stopped folding and bouncing back
whenever I happened to fall — back before
I was taught

that to be solid and brittle
was my lot, was everyone’s lot;
before I forgot
that there is a kind of starlight

that can guide a person
to cities and rivers
if one is willing to push open
what has not, in fact, hardened.