Barefoot on the Pulpit

Backstage, we don't kiss for an empty auditorium. We kiss

for strangers who meet and unmeet, the way cobble paths

halt just short of stained glass. Who knows why I won't

let you know me on the porch swing. A flat beer. A story

of a woman confused then dead now gone from you. Now.

Don't speak of what I have in a home so many miles away.

Let's leave this at campus cats and sewer raccoons, that herd

of deer crossing against the traffic signal that never flashes

yellow or red. Here, it's not the stopping that worries us.

We're breaking into buildings when we should be sleeping,

we're scaling fire escapes toward every crenellated ledge,

and when I barefoot up the stairs that wind to the pulpit,

where a whole organ of faces fills an empty church, you ask

how it feels to be there, so much gold, so much breath.

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Copyright © 2011 Lisa Fay Coutley All rights reserved
from Hayden’s Ferry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission