The Tower

(A poem written after seeing a cell antenna being fitted inside of a church steeple).


It is a rare tower—vanishing as it rises
through that crucial moment—and carries
so many conversations in the hearing of God;
Lifted up by stone and girder
that guildsmen build on mysteries invisible,

in the full strength of the maker, whose
name is nevertheless taken up
and dropped, to the ringing
sound of mason's tools.

The steeple bears up hope and disappointment,
bears sorrows, denials, and deals with death,
adult obsessions about success
and adolescent fears of sex ...
agnostic as it is regarding the nature of the text.

A killer calls once from the station;
the suicide tries again to get through;
new converts fill the air with repetition, and mothers
call sons (out) in hyperbolic intercession.

Holy listening and base devices, long distance
relationships that survive long distance vices;
Angry bitter breakups, that might
have been prevented
by 3 or 4 more G-spots.

Sacred speech and shameless curses rise
through the tower in bold ascent,
architectural signals of humanity's
technospiritual fight to be free,
Or for a spot just above the trees.