Numinous
When the pantheon crumbles, does gravity still work?
What happens to the arcing satellites? What do you do
when the high priests have hung up their mitres, when
the shepherd crooks have all gone straight, when the
curtain is torn, the covenant broke, the tithes spilled all
across the tiles? Which parishes do you frequent, whose
statutes do you study, whose name is on your lips when
you self-flagellate? To whom do you whisper your death
bed confession, alone in the dark, lying atop a certain hill,
bleeding on a certain throne of thorns? What do you do
when the sky opens? There are books about this, but
none written from experience. Like how a baby’s first word
isn’t really its first word, just the first one that’s understood.
The process of rapprochement happens slowly, then all
at once. Just like the apocalypse, which is unevenly
distributed, but speeding up. Here we go. Into the breach.
Copyright © 2017 by Alex Manley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 27, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.