Midnight velvet box lined with stars, shimmer of silver comets tracing the ancient wooden door, directing you to enter & look inward at the night—be ruthless, be methodical.
What is your starkest truth, the proof, laid bare—put on the high beams and probe the angles.
I know it hurts because of what they have done; I know it hurts because of what you have done.
You recognize what lies there in the fetid underbrush of memory.
Let night-shine cleanse, let the velvet hush & dull the serration.
Where else would God want you to whisper if not here, into the listening spiral of divine ear, the organ of compassion?
The golden section rectangle—this box, or a coffin—has a secret property: removal of a square—all its shrill corners—produces another square which mysteriously gives rise to a golden section spiral—thus a removal and a listening, on & on to infinity.
Dear one of mine, lost to me but not lost now, press your lips here, portal to me, open slightly so that the words spill—let this whorl receive your words, holy to holy, magenta regret, ochre wound—this is the locus of humanity—yours & mine—
the saying of it into softness.
This poem also appears in the August 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 8, page 49). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
