Karen Luke Jackson – Noon Prayer at Salisbury Cathedral

In Karen Luke Jackson’s stunning “Prayer at Salisbury Cathedral”, we are guided in ascent up stone, glass, and spire alongside the prayers of parishioners. In taut imagery, we hear the gathered whispers and Gregorian chants, follow the sounds to the genesis of everything in a poem which transcends the cold rigid textures of the cathedral to radiance and biology, to life itself.

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Noon Prayer at Salisbury Cathedral

murmurs—flood silence
——rebound
—————-from chill marked stone

the Our Father
——uttered —-whispered —-sung
—————–in hundreds —-of tongues

by guests —guards —guides
——————————————–statue still

whose chants
——-swirl nave ——chancel
———————-lancet windows
——–transform —–gray walls
———————-into gold transcendence

while angles and angels
—————-funnel praise and petitions
——–up the tower’s spiral stairs

—————–past peregrines and swifts
————————–nesting in its spire, still scaffolded
————————————–from recent repairs

————————————–prayers that bathe the close
————————–blanket Sarum’s Plain
——–where sarsens and bluestones
————————-echo —-reply

for in the beginning ——–sound
———gave rise
———————to brine and sap
————————and bone

———-a hum —a buzz —a swell
——————-of birth cries

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Read On: Related Posts

• William Stafford’s Looking Across the River
• Gurdjieff and The Two Rivers
• Behind Me – dips Eternity – Emily Dickinson
• Pamela Wax – Capricorn Loses His Star
• Barry Casey – Wait Here