by LAURIE KEIM
On the road to nowhere
you don’t expect
symbols or signs
of devotion, do you?
And you don’t expect
to trip upon
things in the long grass
denoting the death of others.
And you don’t expect
the latch to unfasten
so easily, inviting you
to sit alone
in one of the twelve pews, do you?
Dust of your own footsteps,
splayed in crepuscular
fingers, resting on your lap.
Altar, barely raised,
walls, not quite aligned,
everything seeping sunshine
through the cracks.
And so you hear the wind
and the grasshoppers in the heat
and the cooling gargle
of two kookaburras:
the kingfisher of intrinsic confidence.