Frequenters

It’s too dark now for the sun to set the windows alight,
and those tinted bits of glass are sitting solemn in the night;
nothing there to give the crimson glow, no soft and honeyed beams.
No slants of navy blues, or lights made garish, brilliant green.

Two panes are faux Orvieto, rise high up to surpass
the glossy form of Raphael, all hued in thick, stained glass –
their gleam is dulled, the dazzle gone. The night has made them flat.
The chapel sits in silence while the angels swiftly pass.

These hours dwindle endlessly, the patrons come and go.
Most are new, and stop to pray; but the frequenters, they know
that the shadows grant no mercy to the pleas from desperate lips
that echo on these walls like lines hard-beaten from a script.

The frequenters, they do not sit to bow their heads.
They do not crease their hands upon their laps, or speak of plots retread.
They gloss their gaze across the altar, where the sacred scripts are spread,
and it’s understood within these walls, the prayer already said.

And if there’s time between OR and ICU, a doctor might drop by
to shake his head or pinch his nose or pace the floor and sigh.

The doctors see the chapel’s here for families needing prayer,
between the rush of stitches and the pang of cold despair
that comes with hours taught to perch in plastic ER chairs.
But these walls are lined in cotton, the altar needs repair,
and the angels made of glass are made of glass, and may be fair,
but the images are flat, and no ear of God or Healing Raphael
is ever there.

But the frequenters are frequenters, no tsk-tsk can ever halt them
from their habit here of dropping by and gazing at the altar.
Some doctors see the decency, some doctors see the role,
but it’s just upon the frequenters that falls the two-way toll.

In ER rooms around the corner, some men live and some men die.
And the chapel sits in silence while there are angels passing by.