Poem for Tuesday and Worldwide Creches

Cathedral 

By Richard Jones 

Songbirds live

in the old cathedral,

caged birds bought at the street market

and freed as a kind of offering.

Now doves and finches and parakeets

nest in the crooks of the nave’s highest arches,

roosting on the impossibly high

sills of stained-glass windows,

looking down into the valley of the altar

as if from cliffs.

Twice a day, you’ll hear them singing:

at dawn

when the blue light

of angels’ wings

and the yellow light of halos

flood into their nests to wake them;

and during the mass

when the organ fills

the valley below with thunder.

These birds love thunder,

never having seen a drop of rain.

They love it when the people below stand up

and sing. They fly

in mad little loops

from window to window,

from the tops of arches

down toward the candles in the tombs,

making the sign of the cross.

If you look up during mass

to the world’s light falling

to the arms of saints,

you can see birds flying

true blue columns of incense

as if it were simple wood smoke

rising from a cabin’s chimney

in a remote and hushed forest.

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Happy whatever holiday you may be celebrating on Wednesday. I had a quiet Tuesday, since I still have no sense of smell or taste and still have trouble keeping my eyes open though I'm definitely coughing less. Paul took the new car out to get more flour for holiday cookies, but I stayed here and colored my hair in case there are photos taken tomorrow. We did take a walk in the afternoon, since it was sunny and over 50 degrees. 

We watched What If...?, which has been lots of fun this season, and Skeleton Crew, which is entertaining and unpredictable and I have no idea where it's going. Now we're watching the Kennedy Center Honors on demand (Arturo Sandoval, Bonnie Raitt, Francis Ford Coppola, The Grateful Dead) since the 5-overtime Hawaii Bowl is finally over. Some of the international creches from the Bellevue Festival of the Nativity at the LDS Temple: