at the Granary Burial Ground, Boston
when this room was not yet
a room, when the metal door
and window frames were all
that said it would ever be a room,
when the cement floors were
without carpets, when under
the barest of bulbs we looked
out toward Park Street Church
and saw snow falling, gathering
on the tilting markers of the
predestined, when first we entered
this room, and my friend declared
this was sacred space, and I
assumed he was thinking of
what we saw outside, the Puritan
revenants, founders, martyrs,
but now I believe he meant
what was here in this granary
of words, on shelves brimming
with the effort to tell what little
we have known, the lessons that
we forge, forget, and re-learn,
some stored in the poetry,
those seed-grains we will need
to plant early in the next year.
for Sharon Britton
Solstice, 19-20