The Cathedral
Morning light is streaming
through a hole in the roof,
back-lighting a dark-robed priest
picking his way through the debris.
The iconostasis wobbles,
saints veiled in dust,
and the heavy candlesticks
lie toppled like chess pieces
at the end of a match.
Outside, the city is a mouth
of broken teeth, but citizens
are finding each other,
determining what can be saved.
The priest stops to listen—
it reminds him of the dachas,
the chatter he would hear
at the start of planting season.
He looks around, takes a deep breath
and brushes dust off St. Volodymyr,
raises up the baptismal font.
Jesus is still hanging on the cross.
Already he hears the women approaching
with their buckets and brooms.
© Nina Forsythe
Nina Forsythe is a freelance editor, knitter, gardener, and City Council member in Frostburg, MD. She has an MFA from Bennington, and her poems, translations, and reviews have appeared in Nimrod, Kestrel, Chiron Review, Taproot, Prairie Wolf Press Review, Loch Raven Review, and the anthology Knocking on the Door, among others. She’s a three-time winner of the Backbone Mountain Review Poetry Prize, and she hosts a monthly Coffee with a Writer.
The Loch Raven Review 