"penumbra" (poem based on a Regina Walker photograph)

penumbra

I heard a choir of women faintly
as if melisma on the calling faith
of Hildegard von Bingen.

Echoes came, remembrances
and memorials to fresh trembling eyes,
before the wings of gargoyles hectored
days toward macabre and hollowness.

This window darkly and the bars of bone
hold back, imprison, shutter up as silence
my simple spirit now left to listening.

I listen to the molten time of glass
that vibrates faintly a thousand prayers
caught and held between diamond mesh
of distance from that little girl who thrilled
to hear the steps of God invisible pacing
somewhere in the empty nave.

Yet a ghost of things still moves on my skin, into the eyes.
All myriad objects seem to shout, "Remember me!" and
this day goes holy and naive into the camera lens' ritual
hearing of confessions pouring to vast light.


The glass darkly trembles
with the echoes of melismas
faintly hoping against hope.

photo by Regina Walker -- see Rubaru