by Robbie Gamble
A broad stained-glass rose window
perforated the south apse. When clouds
outside dispersed I could count the shafts
of emerald, ruby, Atlantic blue
those Sunday mornings
when the sermon bored me.
My heart neither lifted nor hardened
by dry Episcopalian wafers.
I sang in the choir, robed and surpliced
until my voice broke, and God
lent me to wander. On a Tokyo civic map,
one block of kanji is rendered:
Shelter for Persons Who Cannot Go Home.
A grace gets refracted in translation.
::
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Dialogist, Post Road, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He is the poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine, and he divides his time between Boston and Vermont.
Image: Bradley Pritchard Jones
ID: A stained-glass window with robed figures partially illuminated.
Psaltery & Lyre 