Sacred Site
For Kathryn H.
I’m facing a wall
across the subway track:
old paint and rust
blotched
into billows
of white
smeared with rose, ochre,
even azure –
chemical
efflorescences
of decay.
Yet by another alchemy,
I find a baroque cloud,
a face, a torso.
Not seeking but only seeing
a transformation takes place.
We were talking of journeys, of pilgrimages
to sacred sites.
And you said
Any site can be sacred.
And I thought: so that’s how it works.
If any sight can be transformed
by an act of attention,
perhaps so too – with a deeper seeing –
any site.
So that one might glimpse
for an instant
(how could one hope for more?)
the world
that shimmers
on the other side
of sight.
- Nina Mermey Klippel