POETRY
Lifting the Veil
“In the name of the…”
He cast these words into the world
from memory,
reflexively,
a blink of the eye,
or finger touching fire.
The prayer, however,
became lost,
evaporating
like raindrops
after a summer shower,
disappearing without a sound.
Just a one-sided conversation.
But, hasn’t it always been so?
Like poems
passing through the consciousness
burnish the unknown,
an incandescent sun
illuminates stained glass.
Images spill across wooden pews
where piety and passion conflate.
“Lord I believe…”
offers only a hiatus,
a vexing grace,
manifest in ritual and sacrament.
“As a called and ordained servant…”
speaks of spiraling dogma,
creates a false milieu,
bathed in certainty
and the clarity of the unknowable.
Minds clutch the irrational,
folding it into their truth.
Where the doors close and lock.
None understand the mind of
the prodigal,
only his scars remain,
their designs drawn
from his wanderings.
Kent Reichert holds a Master’s degree in Religion from Wake Forest University and a doctorate from UNC-Charlotte. A native of Southern California, he currently resides in the North Carolina piedmont. His writing has appeared in The Dead Mule, The Dispatch, Agape Review, The Clayjar Review and New Verse News.
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Photo Credit: “Sacred Illumination 02” by byronv2, CC BY-NC 2.0, via Flickr.com.
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