Theology
The scaffolding keeps growing, a mishmash
of iron pipes and two-by-fours and bamboo
poles and plastic, stuck together with glue
and lashed with wire and twine. Workers keep crashing
into each other on narrow planks,
swarming like ants around a dying tree.
The rival architects never agree
on any given master plan, and thanks
to time and the weather, whole sections keep
collapsing — but only to be rebuilt
with more steel, more bamboo, more rites, more wrongs,
while the vastness within grows ever deeper,
darker — a void teeming with birds, filled
with the echoing music of their songs.
© Michael Fleming
Williamsville, Vermont
May 2023
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