THE FIVE OF PENTACLES

We don’t go to the glass cathedral.
It is winter, the gates are shut, someone
has woven a desiccated rose 
through the iron curlicues. I want it 
to be a blessing. I want to take it 
into my mouth & coax it back 
to full flush. But we do not 

go to the glass cathedral in the forest.
The specter of trees haunts us
instead, as we descend 
the mountain—“maybe this summer,”
she says. When the glass is an eye
made of fire. When the ferns recoil 
from the slow stroke of heat, bending  

like exorcised bodies. Maybe
the padlock will crumble to ash & we will 
walk through the portal, bare feet 
depressing the prayers of the mycelium.
We won’t hear the hawk, as we do 
now, rushing to meet the bloody evening 
that spills over the rock face. We won’t 

hear him in the glass cathedral. 
There will be only the drowning
of shutter snap sound effects, chatter 
& footfalls resonating, single file, 
around the interior perimeter, 
where the forest can watch you 
but never come in.