Empty Vessels

The temple bell has been displaced,
a centerpiece now, in a store an ocean or two away
from it’s sanctuary, it sits on a table,
gleaming and brass,
beautifully cast, like sculpture,
your eye is drawn to it,
but it feels dead. Unhung it does not ring
and out of place, it feels as if the holy has fled.
A craftsman masterpiece, no more.

You linger. Too long perhaps to be seemly.
Likely the shop keeper is expecting a sale, but no,
you are caught up in the mystery
of where the holy has gone? Does it live
in the ruins of the ancient temple
where it once hung?

Or has it become a mere object
because those that came to worship
are no longer close at hand.
Do we bring the holy with us.
Perhaps it is not the object that is holy,
but us. Perhaps it is us who create the sanctuaries
where we worship and without the God in Us
a space is just a space, with all our gods
somewhere they are welcomed and embraced.

About this poem.

I have a deep love for religious artifacts. Come to my house and you will see an old cross or two, a Russian icon, A page from a Medieval manuscript of the holy book of hours and a page from a 16th-century Geneva Bible hang framed on my walls. There is a building fragment (legal, I bought it from their shop) from Beckery Chapel, the first monastery in Britain, dated back to the 5th century. To me, there is a bit of the holy in them.

But I realize too they are only things. Without belief, they are only things. God may live there, but without our openess….. they are mere objects. Empty Vessels. Because we are empty vessels.

It is the same about other parts of our life. A poem about faith. About holiness. And about love. Poetry is never about one thing.

The picture was taken at AsiaBurano, a store in Great Barrington, Mass, that claims to be the largest emporium of Aisian Antiquities,

Tom