This morning opens onto a great expanse—
God is everywhere, have you heard?
He is the grass on which we sit, calm in one another’s presence, wanting for nothing;
He is the optimal temperature for human thought, the fruits
that drop, full to the point of bursting through their skins, into our laps;
He is the laughter of children we fail to hear,
so deep in our private rapture we have lost ourselves;
He is the narrow gate, the untrodden path through the garden.
If He is made of earth, I would like to disappear into His body.

In the garden you lose all sense of time and place—
you see the young poets, saints, and prophets
dying in the past. You see Keats
breathing deeply to displace with air
the darkness that has settled in his lungs, and the plash
of the Bernini Fountain in the Plaza di Spagna
has done no good. Where was He then,
our Lord and Savior? Who, in His absence,
had He entrusted to heal the sick,
to lay hands upon the consumptive world,
to let these perfecti die so young,
disgraced, their names engraved in water?

The world, at times, is more than its reflection
in the green eye of the pond
at the center of the Public Gardens, the swan boats
breaking the soft impression of the clouds
on the shaken surface of the water.
In the shade of the plane tree, a fountain
marks the passing of the day, from the angel
of grief to the basin never really full.
We cannot feel it happening, this change,
but when we look again, into the pool,
a different pair of eyes will greet us.

Beyond, the opalescent windows of the church,
the sanctuary lantern with its seven angels
offering their globes of fire,
the cold hard pews and the altar
with its promise of salvation,
the body and the blood of Christ
which become our own.
We are welcome here; this is our home.
Nothing shall disturb the intimate silences
within us, where all things come to rest.
A belief in the soul is a belief in perpetual stillness.
We do not change; we just expand, diffuse,
like vapor in the air; our perspectives shift,
we can possess all kingdoms;
we continually retreat into the inner chambers
of the soul, the cloisters of the heart,
falling back and back into the stars.
That is why, when you step into the church,
you experience a sense of loss: the self
is given up, surrendered
to the force that gave it life. Every truth
begins in sacrifice. When you step outside
into the blinding brightness of a Sunday morning,
your self returns: transfigured.

Under the arbor, the prophetess
entwines a snake around a wooden cross,
the blue sky aching at its prime
where it hinges on the honeysuckle
and the briar rose, the jasmine
winking out, the bells of blue wisteria
silencing their fragrant hearts.
When you reach the gate, know that this is
not the end; in heaven, I have heard,
each garden opens endlessly into another.