Cavernous Words- A Poem

More than anything, you were there

Around us, cathedral ceilings rising tall

With no god to look even twice

A lectern and a microphone

You were there, and so was I.

I’ve never believed in a higher power

Not once, save for childhood fear

Felt in the home of an all-seeing eye

Staring at the portraits, the moments of pain

And every lasting bit of suffered iconography.

Above all things, it was never a home

Though I’ve heard it described as such

No, for me it was something different

Something else

Less road to eternal life and more mortal parking lot.

So I say this without reservation

No exaggeration or ill-fated whim

For a stretch of two hours of infinite time

I thought this might be how it must have felt

To sit in a room where you knew all the words

Where you knew what bits would be said

And why

And yet that knowledge stole none of the joy from the room

It didn’t take away the thrill of the stories

That danced like old hymns or vampire bats

High up above in acoustic built skies.

You once said that the saddest word in the world

Was the great echo felt in “Alive”

And my life has been spent in agreement with you

There’s never been another I’d choose

Save for the emptiness I’ve always felt in all things

Since I was a child

A boy

In a church pew told only to pray

And that if I did so just long and just hard enough

I’d find the moment, the hope

And the way

I never did though, not really

I don’t think

I’d hate to imagine I never have noticed

But for the briefest of moments, a pause or a breath

The flicker of a star felt in time

I found a small seat near an ocean

A pond?

And the world boomed like a symphonic hall

That sent great words now scattering

As Seattle rain that I’ve read all my life

And they gathered and lingered like the friends they have been

Keeping me company while I have waited

For the arrival of somebody else’s known god

In the silence of that somebody’s church.

And for a time you were there, a moment, a dot

And I knew how it might’ve felt to be those

I used to study on Sundays of childhood silence

A childhood for those most unlike me

Those who built towering churches

Those who placed stained glass in their homes

And what a wonder it was, what a gift

To feel for just a moment, that flicker

The breath held for an hour or two

The realization that you were there, in that hall,

My one-night cathedral,

And somehow there I was

So was I.

And for a time, sitting there,

Listening as your voice carved stories in stone

I felt as I did as a child, with my own books held tight in my arms

At home in the thought that there might not be a god

But at least I was no longer alone.