I didn’t believe then.
I don’t believe now.
Not in the efficacy of votive candles
lifting prayers to heaven on small waves of heat.
But in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere
on a hill high over Lyon, France,
the praise of city traffic rumbling below,
the Rhone River flowing and the sky wet in the river,
I practiced the suspension of disbelief
and lit a votive candle for a sick friend.
I knew it would do no earthly good,
no molecular repentance in rebel cells,
no swift and mighty angel-wings
fanning him with therapeutic radiance,
no sense of my presence in his mind
as we stood apart together in mine,
I among marble columns holding up heaven,
he in a hospice bed 4,114 sky miles beyond
the western curved horizon of the earth.
I felt good doing what I knew was useless,
lighting the candle with its mystic flame.
I long for the embarrassment of holy moments,
when what I was doing did not agree with what I believed,
I prayed to an implausible god to telescope the miles between us
into the vast concentric space of heart within heart.
Lyon, France/2016