Maximilian Heinegg: Believe Our Ashes
Cathedral
Florence, the blasted speakers I skimped on
distorted & I heard waves
instead of where you cannot breathe, the ocean
a lover who never wanted to hear any prayer
save its own.
As I drive in, your echo but an octave lower, I’m pulled
the way I imagine faith could be
followed, the way my love beckons
me into water where she’s assured, & I come to
believe our ashes will stay, here where she tells me
to pour them, if I have to hold their strange exhalation,
& again, this light will come through the stained
glass of the waves, our time together, the cathedral
written in images so the faithful could read
when death was the secret everyone kept
telling, my finger taps the hymnal to hear
the impossible, never let me go.
Maximilian Heinegg's poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, December Magazine, The Cortland Review, Crab Creek Review, and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. As a singer-songwriter, his records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com He lives and teaches English in Medford, MA.