I borrow a cranny at high noon,

busily making it a hut,

a smoky, damp abode of

one whose speech is silence.

 

A guest,

I make myself at home.

I huddle,

back tight against a cool column,

a tree of marble

whose boughs arch into a cathedral.

 

Sitting ravenously

the ears continue to hear,

the half‑closed eyes still see.

 

This cosmos in concrete and buttress

hollows me out.

 

I snuggle

closer to the tree

and tuck my feet under.

Feet, don’t mar the pew.

 

This great grandmother in stone,

is chilled and immense on-the-whole,

warm and receptive in part.

 

Intimacy needs the heart of a nest,

mutters a French philosopher in my brain.

 

Over this architectural edge

I can peer into immensity.

 

You make the stations

without moving or breaking

the envelope of silence.

 

Others are here,

hidden between the pages

of a voluminous space.

 

Nameless things peek out from cracks,

bowels in holy mortar.

 

A beam drifts on a wisp

then skids off a brass cross.

Souls float among cherubs,

less naked than we.

 

I am wrapped in empty arms,

garments of awe.

 

The column cools the spine.

 

Somewhere behind

a coin clinks

with a silver ring.

The man at‑one with the tree

starts at the sound

but drifts back to contemplating his predicament.

 

Hush settles to her knees

and begins making silence of the routine.

 

For a bare moment

nothing at all transpires.

 

A herald’s voice

whispers sharply from a stained window.

 

I shuffle.

 

The lids flutter and the thighs ache,

almost asleep against the hard leg

of this architectural great grandmother.

 

“Time,” she whispers.