RELIGION Poem: Gregorian Chant, by Zac Garripoli

Their voices
rising like the tide that lifts our souls to safety,
carrying our heart’s most profound prayer up
past spires, vaulted ceilings,
inlaid with the ornate,
mosaics of beliefs that we have borne
since birth, in dark-robed, hooded garb
that calls to mind our final end,
singing out a rhapsody of paradise
—which none of us has ever seen.

I come to them each time
with open heart, with ears
prepared to listen for a sign,
a word, perhaps,
laid down like ointment over broken skin.

In an antiquated language
so much like prayer,
that we cannot help but move in that direction
with them: upward,
where frankincense arouses gargoyles
carved in stone as counterweights
to plaster saints.

If there is a Heaven
like the one depicted on the cathedral
named for Christ’s right hand,
it is only through a narrow door
that we will enter it; a tiny crevice
in the canopy of all the empty space
that stands between,
and that which lies beyond
our understanding,

carried away on a tide of hope,
arising from the throats of men
to the God whose praise
they cannot adequately sing,
but feel

again,
each time the music issues from their lips,
harmonious and happy,
like the concatenation of the bells
calling us, calling all of the willing,
to His presence.

Immortality

What he saw in her eyes was not hope.

It was not a gauzy paradise
floating on clouds,
but a small child in a gathering storm
welcoming the rain.

Where was the life they made
together? The friends and home
he expected to see?

Without hope, she slipped away
to where fear and pain were gone:
hers, then his,
as the months and years passed.

So when he closed his eyes that final time
he saw what she once saw:

the place where death has no power.

Witness

I overturned a rotting log
And witnessed God,
Crawling on all sixes
Through the mud.

He was changing wood into the Bread of Life:
Holy food for worms that turned to dirt
Before my eyes.

Ever since that day I see Him
Everywhere I look:

Weaving twigs and hatching eggs,
Swimming in the pond,
Running at the forest’s edge,
Setting every night then rising
Every morning, shedding light
So I can witness Him again
In every corner of creation.

Christmas Morning

It has either snowed this winter night
or it is morning, and grass and trees
are crystalline with hoary breath.

Hard to believe,
in three short months,
the branches of the cherry tree will swell with sap,
and shortly afterwards, buds
will break their dormancy,
as though death and birth
were simply phases of the same benign disease,
metastasizing into flowers and then fruit.

So difficult to imagine anything being born
into a world of emptiness and gloom.

And yet, an orange-headed bird
is crooning on a frosted limb,
as though he or she were parent to a nest of hatchlings
hidden in a thicket.

It makes me wonder what it knows
to sing so loud so early in the morn.

Perhaps it whistles in the face of those
who slipped last night into the frozen void:
those who couldn’t hold on long enough
to feel the church bells warm the air
with hopeful laughter.

You hear and see so many things,
it isn’t easy to perceive the miracles,
even when they happen all around you.

Why, just last week in church,
a mother and her child
were carrying a wreath,
fashioned from the cuttings off a nearby tree.

As they laid their gift before the crèche,
I swore I smelled the scent of cherry blossoms,
emanating from what might have passed
for barren branches glistening with snow,

if I hadn’t witnessed morning
with my own two eyes.