Here is holiness: Folger’s from a styrofoam cup,
prayer books and pudding, a sign that reads
“silence here” so I don’t say sorry
when our shoulders brush.
The bells strike.
I go to find God in the red pine,
where East Kentucky oaks bare their skin
and smoke lifts behind the silo, sky smoothed
flat as a shore line.
The divine
is somewhere in it.
“The courage to doubt is the same courage to believe”
I read in the library. My doubts are plenty
so I’m halfway there, following
the thrush back to the crucifix—
crying now, slick with rain or two tears,
two candles lit at Compline.
Lights go black in the abbey:
a whoosh from beyond the walls,
urgent, beckoning.
Is it God
or just the wind?
The bells strike.