requires no great pilgrimage
nor any red-eye flight to book.
Upon arrival, there may not even
be an altar on which to offer
what is owed. Holy ground
is wherever you leave your love.
So every public bathroom stall within
which I have grieved into my hands.
A certain Catholic church basement,
still haunted by the sweaty magic of old
friends long gone, the dark wooded backroads
of my native Virginia, the humid shoebox room
I occupied my first year apart from childhood,
grimy twin XL and cobwebbed window panes.
Holy ground is wherever love finds you again.
The back stairwell of the dilapidated classroom
building we accidentally followed last February.
The bus stop where I first kissed you, feeling
it was right. And now, these short walks home
after the sun has set and I, drunk on the peace
of easy evenings, still feeling as right as the first
night I felt it. Holy ground, these moonlit paths
I walk alone, wordless, basking in starry stillness,
this sacred earth something we now share.