from “For the Lost Cathedral,” 13

← v9n2, Fall 2010

One life, one life, and so the multitudes

return. A secret dies in each

and so returns.

He considered the courage of living

without the secret,

how, for all he knows,

a secret admires that way of being

friends, of opening the palms

of prayer like a boat

exposed to heavy water.

There are days when heaven falls

silent, when the secrecy

does away with the secret.

Always more flowers

in the field than hands

to hold them. Some lie

on the beds of the multitudes.

They are the rivers of the field

ever losing the thing

that bears their name.

They are the small wind

that waves the fallen colors of the many,

the sun-drenched river

of the near to the far,

the joys of the field above our names

ever becoming something

corruptible, nameless, something

else. Praise them.

mortality religion myth

Bruce Bond

Bruce Bond is the author of three forthcoming books: Rise and Fall of the Lesser Sun Gods (Elixir Press), which won the 17th Annual Elixir Book Prize, Frankenstein’s Children (Lost Horse Press), and Dear Reader (Free Verse Editions). He is the author of eighteen published books including Sacrum (Four Way Books, 2017); Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems 1997–2015 (Louisiana State University, 2017), which won the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award; Black Anthem (University of Tampa Press, 2016), which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry; Gold Bee (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), which won the Helen C. Smith and Crab Orchard Awards; and Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press, 2015). He is Regents Professor of English at University of North Texas.