Walls of the Temple

The paint has chipped,
revealing the prosaic plaster underneath the bright colors,
a victim of weather and neglect,
The surface is never as strong as it seems.

The thin layer of paint is bright.
What is left of it still calls the wounded.
The God still lives within,
despite appearances otherwise.

You run your hands across the paint.
You feel it’s smoothness and then
the roughness in the empty spaces
where the paint no longer stands.

It is too much like your soul,
smooth and rough, lacking decoration,
losing bits of the pretty with each storm
yet still standing
and not yet empty.

About this poem

The photograph is of a small replica of a Hindu temple that lives on a hillock at Salem Art Works.

Tom