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Saturday, May 9, 2020

TWO QUEENS    

Gargoyles perched
on Mary’s church;
buttresses flew
o’er fenestration blue.
Chartres’ ancient hands extend
to yet one more pilgrim band.

Saints, sinners, citizens,
common and royal --
statues, weather-grained,
usher visitors through portals
to darkened
mystery spaces, designed
by masons.
Crusader booty from Arabia,
they crafted pointed arches and porticoes
with compasses and
arcane mathematical ratios.

The gray ghost-lit columns
prop pointed arches --
and greet,
guild by guild,
         window by dedicated window,
the furriers, the tanners
the carpenters, and coopers,
the stone workers, the shoemakers
glass makers and bakers:
         first come, first served builders
still attending Mary’s sacred maternal court.

We approached the crossing
with measured steps:
nave, apse, choir, transepts.
Honoring Mary at center court.
Mother of Him,
mediator for all who seek,
patient moderator of their childlike rivalries
(Rose colored political volleys
launch across her throne.).
Her grand vista: round windows,
roses,
ancient glass
passing left, right and center,
jewel-lighting her sacred space.

Back home,
in a white  lighted,
         medic space, mystery free,
a town lined up to see
a dying country queen.

Unaware of her care-giver court,
and white curtain vistas:
         children, friends, waiting,
         assisting,
         time running short.
No eternal favors to give,
her family not divine,
she still united her pilgrims one last time –
a collected expression
of today’s goodby,
missing mysteries of the yesterdays,
that fed her generation
and led them to their time to die.

Events
would send her
through parlor, church, procession and tent.
We came to honor and remember
an old  life newly spent.

Atop the earthy end
of what remained
roses’ pained aromas
were left to ascend. 


Dennis R. Keefe
July 2, 2007

Those familiar with Henry Adams will recognize ideas from his Mont St. Michel and Chartres.

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