Closed for Repairs

The church is closed for repairs,
broken in ways unseen from the street.

People walk by.
unnoticing. Too busy to be bothered

with distractions like souls and prayers,
cocooned in steel and glass, not exactly heaven,

But enough for the moment, like blinders on a horse
the canyon walls create a calmness borne of blindness,

For those of us who find God in soaring arches and light,
we are cut off, seekers again, wanderers in a desert

others call home.

About this poem

One of my great joys in New York City is visiting churches. Almost everywhere I go as I work, there are chapels and cathedrals nestled among the skyscrapers. I love to slip in and savor the beauty of another age. I will be the first to tell you that we can find God anywhere, but these holy spaces sing to me. I find peace in them like I do in few places.

Yesterday I passed the church in the picture. It was closed for repairs. “There’s a poem in that.” I thought. And so there was.

Tom