Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Revelation 21:22-22:5

Traveling Light

When the spirit carried John to New Jerusalem
I caught a ride
tearing out this page for passage.

We are hitchhikers 
keen as any 12 year old at midnight
waiting at the door for Breaking Dawn.
We'll do anything.

I heard a travel commentator remark once
that we remember places by their light:
Barcelona, the Hebrides.
It is what we carry back more than sounds and tastes,
the way Chartres Cathedral takes away the streets
in exchange for the sweep of arches toward infinity.

I will go back to my old neighborhood, of course,
that land of tired conjurer's tricks -
but the light, being very God,
cannot be contained in these jeweled walls:
it spills out, wherever I stumble,
hurling prisms through the murk.
 

© 2010 Andy Gay