Selected Poems

MATCHSTICK CATHEDRALS - Sixty European temples, fashioned/ out of matchsticks, card and glue, glass cases,/ ink-penned labels, sixty holy places;/ workmanship painstaking and impassioned./ And I, who cannot fold a paper hat,/can only wonder why a man would waste/ his talent and his time with sticks and paste/ constructing with exquisite skill such tat./ But squinting through a stained-glass window, there/ within the nave, 200 figures, knees on/ hassocks, pray to God their wooden souls/ will fly to Paradise. Why make stick dolls/ that can't be seen? And yes, there is a reason:/ if God is here, then God is everywhere.