Our Lady On Fire (4/15/19, the Destruction of Notre Dame)

I was feeling so peaceful yet so strangely sad on my walk this morning, as I discovered the apple blossoms in full bloom and took this simple photo of my favorite flower, my favorite tree, only to come home and discover that Notre Dame de Paris was burning down. So I wrote the poem below...

In 1972 I followed the pilgrimage routes throughout France, visiting all the great cathedrals and pilgrim churches, meditating deeply in each holy place. These cathedrals were built to honor the Divine Mother, and constructed according to sacred geometry, interpenetrating spheres of glass and stone all resonant with the Golden Mean, the most universal mathematical formula in creation.
If you have ever prayed in Notre Dame, or Chartres, or Mary Magdalene's shrine at Vezelay, or ever heard a Bach cantata or Gregorian chant in that space, you will understand what a loss this is, and how fragile our civilization. Let us remember what Christ said at the Last Supper on Good Friday eve: "A new commandment I give you: love one another."

Our Lady is on fire.
Our Lady is on fire.
And when the cathedral
comes home to the ash
of which cement is made,
the mosque and temple
return, time's rubble,
to their ground, I promise
that I will enter
the tympanum and long
deep nave
of an apple blossom
to pray and be whole
on an April morning,
on the first day of
Easter week perhaps,
when Our Lady is on fire.
I will enter this chapel
of indestructibly frail
white petals,
risen again
from its black seed.