THE KING’S CHAPEL BELL
by William Doreski
Ringing the King’s Chapel bell,
the largest Paul Revere cast,
you leap at the rope and drag
with all your weight and suffer
reverberations that fill you
with the shock of sudden love.
From a safe, empathic distance
I picture you dangling with both
hands on the rope, the clang
assuming a dozen dimensions,
the bronze so thoroughly beaten
it’s too tough to respond to you
the way I do, with clapper subdued.
You like the taste of my jokes,
sometimes, but ringing the bell
is serious enough to impale
the silence we’ve let ripen
between us: impale and spill
blood that’s thinner than water.
That reminds me how the rain
clatters on the chapel roof
in several languages, mostly
ecclesiastical of intent.
We can’t interpret but we claim
a heritage derived from bronze
and granite, leaded glass and oak,
and mistake it for religion.
No one believes in the post
Episcopal God who haunts
this Unitarian space; but
watching you hop up and down
to evoke that tremendous sound
I believe in you so perfectly
that even the rain’s conversation
for a moment seems almost true.
Copyright © 2016 by William Doreski.