“A free-verse 20 line poem, unrhymed, in the style of John Ashbury's early poems in "The Double Dream Of Spring." A meditation on the limitations of religion and spiritual belief.”

The color of belief distorts, as glass jars  
In the kitchen rinse with daylight, colored by doubts.  
We shuffle relics—faded medals, tarnished keys—  
Each one a stilled inheritance: assurance, dismay,  
Its edge dulled by so much polite touching.  
Outside, an unfinished street peters out between houses,  
Yet inside, the faith is always finished—a neat circle  
In chalk, closing itself feverishly.

Prayer is the returned echo of one's own question,  
But who, deeply and without vanity, listens  
For its correction? The calendar, with its saints,  
Presumes a clarity I have never found in daylight.  
Religion is the lamp’s steady glow on the wooden floor—  
But beside it, the stark hush between two shadows  
Is louder. At dusk, the schools empty out,  
Pages of catechism left scattered, wind-ruffled,  
As if holiness were only a matter  
Of how many times paper meets skin.

Each morning we pocket our little assurances,  
Shadow-box through spilled sunlight, and wait  
For a sign beyond the worn limit of knowing,  
Something folded—impossible—and yet still breathing  
There in the fissure between what’s spoken and what’s withheld.

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