It's a new sacrament
and it drizzles from each
savage curve of the
mountain
and is preformed
by whatever shows up:

the first moan of daylight,
even its daughter, the rose,
brazen and moist
for a minute of freedom,

and it knows nothing about
the heart shaped inferno,
the glittering abyss,
I came from
where love is dangerous
and never enough.

The earth is a grave that
swallows what it loves
and brings it back again—
so here I am back
in this wide space
that devours shadows and
a few gasping memories;
and what are they
but crushing pits where our
dead dreams used to dance?

I am no lotus,
not even the chickweed
on the side of the road,
but I believe I glimpsed
my kind of religion
in a mossy creek that
moves like a priestly chant,

a liturgy,

and I didn't have to trudge
across the Himalayas
or climb a Yucatan pyramid
or drink the waters of Lourdes
to find it.
It was all here in leaves and
pebbles and
the vastness within.

And you thought
they were real:
the chains you dragged through
life as if they were
issued at birth,
while all this time you
were weightless
in the Arms you had forgotten—

you were music
from the highest court,
perfect in your flaws,


a wisp of cherished Light,
another reason to believe,
the first note of your
undying song.

Remember . . .


Patricia Joan Jones