LITURGY

by Rob Lewis


Let the past follow the past. The beautifully faded map
wants to dissolve, to become fragments and leaves
for the wind. Let the wind have them.

We are wanderers again.
There is no place
that must not be freshly seen.

A glossy black beetle lifts its antenna
into the humming air
and waves them at the mountains
which gaze at the sun
which invites all things
to sing their names.

The listening among these,
and the cells rearranging,
that is the trail,
discerning what is real
from what we’ve merely made,
with hominid
humility, blessed

by the trillion voices, finding and
singing them back
to the centers of our prayers.


Rob Lewis is a natural materials painter and plasterer living in the northern Puget Sound city of Bellingham, Washington. His poem "The Painter" received the 1999 International Poetry Award in Atlanta Review.
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Rob Lewis's "Liturgy" is a New Verse News contribution to Blog Action Day, 15 October 2009.


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