Called By Your Name

Surrounded by song 

And the golden voices of a choir. 

Sitting high above, 

A cross pressures the priest to sing,

And as he incantates

My eyes fly about the temple

Towards you working a piano.

I can only see your curved figure,

Your broad shoulders draped in black cloth

And the mountain of gray atop of them. 

I wonder what expression you give to the keys,

The only things that know your true face.

What is it that you happen to be unlocking?

Is it the clasp on a spellbook

Which holds the true name of God?

Is it the door to a sacristy

Where ancient transcribers 

Debate the wealth of Jesus?

Or is it a closet, where a forbidden mirror sits,

Because to look into it would mean

To see your face and thus to see

Every living connection, and every fragile reflection?

The priest lifts a scrap of flesh into the air, 

And slowly your fingers

Announce a procession down ivory aisles.

Present in the music is a divine source,

A source of creation and spiritual blood.

Each note is a flap of wings, each hammer

Rings on the flimsy gold of halos. 

And the grand container, 

Housing sound in its wooden body, 

Is created from fallen trees in the garden.

Called by your name and not His, 

For you are a servant to whirling vibrations

And apostle of the colorless form.

I watch you working a piano

Knowing you don’t belong to me or this world

But to a realm of echoes, 

And will one day return to that rhythmic source

Where you will swim in a silver creek of notes.