The Singing Stone

You are hidden
Secreted from our sight
Like the dark heart
Of a russian doll
One inside the other fitting
Inside snug and tight
Overlayered and painted
With your multifarious
Faces smilingly
Benign.

And the stone goes on
Vaulting its walls
Outward from your heart
Like a vast entrancing maze
We walk within 
Stretching our feet
In your direction -
We have grasped the 
Pauper's Knocker and
Stepped inside your
Precinct, crossed the line,
Your threshold,
Trembling.

We feel your many veils
Before us sway
Thickly.
We must sift them 
Cautiously
Until our line
Moves inward as
One man. 

We hear our footsteps
Echoing 
Your mosaic floors - we are
Knaves treading
Hallowed ground - 
We walk your pillars
And are grand 
But we become 
Immured, Inbound,
Surrounded by these
Holy walls -
By plan alone 
Is this place unmazed
As it red-dotted, says:
'You are here'
And arrows point
Our progress through
Your hemispheres, our eyes touch
Stone to stone and linger
As we inward-move, silent
Pilgrims walking
To find
Your shrine.  We negotiate
The turns and congregate
Beneath your beams, your 
Embossed ceilings -

We are treading men, alert
To cross another line, traverse
Another arch and door, progress
To feel a carpeted
Floor beneath our feet say:
'Welcome' 
And your walls and pillars,
Ribs and vaulting, there
Begin to shrink and
Converge.

We find you here
At last
In the smallest space
Amid your privacy: clandestine 
King
To whom we kneel and still
Our bodies, raise our eyes 
To pierce your hidden
Lineaments:

We are inside
Your tiny shrine -
The beating place within
A stone vastness - is
The charismatic gift 
The hub from which your
Waves of love radiate
Rings of silent light
Pooling outward from the
Stone thrown in its spreading
Season - its reverberations
Are the rings
Still travelling
To gather and progress us

Here before 
The niche wherein it
Fell - the vacancy it split
And filled - your stone
Floats here before our very eyes 
And sings.

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