Monuments

The Abbot in Autumn

Abbot Suger and the choir of St. Denis, the first structure in the full Gothic style

The Abbot surely stood
beneath an aisle of ancient trees
and marveled at its height,
its rise and great limbs arching
upward to a light-filled vault.
green, yellow, red, orange,
bright blue between,
traceried with twigs
dissolving in the
mystical light.

Let us have
no more tunnels,
catacombs shutting
out the sky, stone dark.
Sursum Corda!
Let in the forest lights
above naves of trunks,
groves of trunks in piers,
slender trunks in colonettes,
lifting leafy capitals, ribs, liernes,
into that vibrant spectrum
above.

Wilda Morris’s Poetry Blog, reprinted in The Avocet

Tikal

Arms outstretched,
triumphant after my slow and careful ascent
up the steep ladder-like steps
to the top of the pyramid
where ancient priests
unsheathed their obsidian knives,
the black blades begging for blood.

Height begets power.
I begin to feel kingship,
feel for my plumed crown.
Looking down on the plaza
I see the ceremony of architecture,
space, upright stele and high stepped forms,
roof combs,
rain softened relief.

This is the Jaguar Pyramid.
I wear the jaguar cloak and quetzal plumes,
inhale incense of copal.

Looking down on the plaza,
I see the crowds looking up,
not in fear or faith, but wonder
at the tall noble towers
and the impulse of their vanished lords.

I am one of them,
one of the time travelers.
I relinquish my plumes.

We are explorers from another dimension
clambering over these stones,
astonished by the implicit authority
of high stepped towers,
huge carved stones
and their austere beauty.

I return to my time.
Climbing down is harder than going up.

In The High Desert
Constellations
Coyotes
Sun and Moon
En la Selva
In The Garden of Venus
Brother Francis