it took three failed attempts at a place to pray to find it twelve hundred years old hollow
unroofed accessible to anyone able to crawl through its lowest arch I entered kneeling
the one place where I would be compelled to join my hands first to each other then
to its millennial binding deep grain bole unrotted by the rain not taking
its plaster and patriarchy down with eve into earth each leaf an icon indelible
soft in the fingers still shining I had to lean back let in the whole sky
like this place no candle smoke ever trapped in its beams I knew
it would die everything would its ages were its ending and then
in its ending only demon- stration insects and seasons
undoing folly gently making mulch and ceremony
in its ending something unstoppable