The Cathedral
A poem by Mark McShurley
The men have taken the stones To build the trees Years of growth Rings set one upon another It is the forest of the King A dry reproduction Like the bones of God inside a man Holding the wet life growing The rose of many colors Illuminates the dust Ooze of crushing centuries Exhaled in silence Under the insistent embrace of gravity Where God is sacrificed to himself Yet his worshipers consume the offering More generosity than any pagan deity A ritual iterated into eternity Tracing a shape so unacceptable: The shape of a tree upon a tree Of infinite longitude and latitude The geometry of one restrained Guarded by the faces of the apostle and the demon Both good and evil have a vested interest For all reality ferments inside the tabernacle Like the deep calm before the storm Eternity crouches in a tiny cell Awaiting apocalypse and morning mass While a small light left burning Welcomes a stranger in the night