Summer Koester
Convergence
By the shrine of Saint Therese
and ashes resting in marble,
a marmot sounds the alarm
as if in warning. We trespass
through a fortress of witch’s
hair moss, past cobblestone church
and Twelve Stations of the Cross,
past shrouded trail to a graveyard
of snail fossils, their spiral mouths
glistening purple and pink guarded
by crows. We follow the yellow brick
rock through emerald greenschist,
leaping from rock to rock, suspended
in time and over boulders igneous.
Rocks that have seen ice ages,
storms, pandemics, hatch-marked
like the face of a mystic, Tetris-stacked
circa the Jurassic. Where gulls
assemble and earrings woven
with prayer and ancestors tremble
from ocean’s breath, or something
else. Crows signal at the gathering
of shells seized like children
for boarding schools, their inner coils
swelling exponential like a virus.
Like love. Forgive us our trespasses,
black-winged sentinels.