On the highway I see them
As for the first time.
Why now, and never before?
All my life lived here
A quarter turn towards a century
Travelling this curve,
Seeing this landscape
Familiar as my own face--
But today
They are new-planted flowers in my mind's soil.
Their numbers startle me, not their presence.
Their numbers, and how frequently
They encroach on vision--
Behind each steeple, another rises
In a vista littered with crosses.
Today, walking in a hospital,
I met Mother Mary guarding a corner
(She of white mantle and bare feet)
And for an instant I could not cling to
I thought I understood--
I thought I saw, I thought I knew.
Stepping out to the street,
I raised my head.
Another church.
In that hallway, had I been unreal,
My t-shirt and tennis shoes cast in plaster,
Standing before barefoot truth?
What if a steeple were not
An arm raised in supplication or
A slender finger pointing upward
But a dagger?
All the city's churches
Press their knifepoints against the sky
And cut through Seen to Unseen.