Against the limestone of a church
I say my prayers.
I whisper my name
and the locations of my life,
Sandusky, Columbus, the great bay Erie,
with its tribes of shadows,
journeying on the water.
I whisper all my conclusions
and give my doubt to the stone.
The hand of the stone touches mine,
cold and grainy,
a dream frozen in its gray eyes,
the remnants of ice and Jurassic seas.
All the names of all the life,
of all the minds and hearts
that ever breathed,
in the dark interior of this wall,
this edifice against my cheek.
Where is the black polished marble
of the wailing wall of Vietnam?
Like the stone of the church,
each year, its names delivered
to the wet currents of lost rivers,
a wife’s small whimper,
a son’s lost memory,
a mother’s fate.
Names in a corridor as long as time,
more endless than all time’s steps,
going on to Jerusalem,
The cries of ancestors and rabbinical loss,
everywhere the same,
the elephant yard,
the monuments of Rome,
the jungle clad friezes,
and cakes of green pyramids
and empty tunnels.
Against the limestone
I say my prayers,
and the sky in its softness
covers the stone with kisses.
I leave behind my palm,
the soul of myself,
lost in endless numbers.