At five o’clock we left the gift shop,
climbed to the Abbey’s balcony.
The antiphon was about to start.
The religious came, entered,
slowly—from all directions—sending
chanted psalms through colored panes.

Wild lilacs climbed the marble walls.
And smoke, then incense, filled the air.
Soft rays from the setting sun,
pinks and shades of
muted lavender,

drenched our cool, jacketed shoulders.
The colors stroked us, loved us.
And we loved softly back.  Why
we loved even the shadows in Conyers,
where the Angel of the Hour
had simply come, dressed in blue.
Cloistered monks had broken silence,

and the poems
and the songs and the prayers
were homing pigeons
bound for home.

First published in ShoeBox Diaries