George Moore

The Cathedral at Night

George Moore

The doors once were always open

once when worship was an ongoing thing

developing like a river or the wind

across the streets where no one came at night

And I would sit in the hard pew

the stone pillars to the great arched roof

like answers to the movements of time

in youth and just then after

Late at night I would walk the streets

looking for the reflection of the moon

and catch it on the high stone steeple

in the faces of the storied windows

The silence was the best of all

a great space built for nothing

that anyone could hear

or see but only somehow feel

the echo of a thought the eyes

of a million gods all that dead air

and one small sailess voice

surrounded by the sea of silence

itself surrounded by the stone

that holds in the fading moment

and then it’s gone and out

I go to sacrifice to the world

with an early morning

cup of coffee

George Moore’s recent collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle 2016). His work has been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Orion, and The Colorado Review. After a career in literature and writing with the University of Colorado, Boulder, he lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia.