A Poetic Reflection on the Gospel book used in Mass

Book

The dance is rigid down the aisle,
a book embraced, held high, held dear:
the common carrier of the tales
on fiber come from cotton fields
and pulp from forest cut in Maine.

What earth has given hands have made
flat, thin and bound between two boards,
the pages covered now with marks
that image sounds that image all:
the pictures of pictures only
are letters gathered into words
and words lined up and bundled tied --
yet here's the kernel of ourselves:
the poems, geneologies,
laws, letters, sayings, prophecies,
psalms, stories, visions handed on
from mouth to mouth and tongue to tongue
and page to page: a year or three
to tell it round again, this book
that dances now in incense sweet
and sweet its alphabet to kiss.



Gabe Huck