G. C. Jeffers

I wander the darkened halls
of my shuttered certainty
searching for a memory
to point me back towards home.

* * *

“How often” muses Faulkner*
“have I lain beneath the rain”
careful here, watch the comma
“on a strange roof, thinking of home?”

* * *

The memory of ancient things
or so Tolkien has noted**
inspires a tragic longing
to to see the ancient things walk.

* * *

The priest chants grace from the altar
death unto life, shadows unto light.
“The bread that came down from heaven”
she intones “The cup of salvation.”

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*This is a quote from As I Lay Dying

** “[I]t seemed to him that he had stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more. In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world. Evil had been seen and heard there, sorrow had been known; the Elves feared and distrusted the world outside: wolves were howling on the wood’s borders: but on the land of Lórien no shadow lay.” The Fellowship of the Ring