The Basilica

Everything at my Alma Mater
has grown old since graduation --
the dorms, the classrooms --
everything but the Basilica.

Where dark walls once loomed
menacingly above the trees,
now the bricks are clean,
freshly scrubbed with sand,
cemented bright with mortar.

Shiny new spires gift the towers
with height, sharpness,
and gold crosses
glittering toward sunset.
I prefered the towers uncrowned --
tall, flat-topped,
like unfinished ladders to heaven.

Inside, steel doors with glass
replace the hulking, moaning
slabs of wood that fought 
the winter wind before dawn,
when candle flames shivered
in the dark
and it was just you and me.

Gone are the side altars,
sculpted in marble,
festooned with gold --
where do your priests
celebrate mass alone at night,
lit only by two small candles 
flickering?

No one warned me in advance
of the changes to this place 
where I prayed,
where I agonized toward manhood,
where I tired of the battle
and gave up on you,
lost you, or became lost,
I'm not sure which.

This place, where I want nothing more now
than to fall upon my knees,
to scrape my breast across the tiles,
to lie prostrate before your body
kept whole
inside the tabernacle.

Your heart is still here,
between the pink granite columns,
smooth as mirrors,
beneath a rose window
blinding me with orange and yellow,
before the carved white altar,
flat and cold against my palms.

Your hymns still rise
from the Moller Organ,
wood grain glowing,
silver pipes silent
but reverberating with memories
of thunder
on Christmas Eve
and Easter Vigil Mass.

I take my seat in one of the pews,
where the monks pray,
where I prayed twenty years ago,
filled with naive dreams
of priesthood.

Here, in the silence,
you whisper to me
in the same perfect voice
as always.

I love you...

Scott Speck
11/25/2001