Labyrinth Lines

Labyrinth Lines

Maryella Desak Sirmon

Monks laid out the approach with care,
part of their labor between
fixed hours of prayer.

Matins

Compline Lauds

Vespers Prime

None Terce

Sext

Wild grasses tickle my ankles
on an ancient sand passageway leading
to the waiting portal, to seven circuits
enclosed in eight boxwood walls.
No string or bread crumbs needed,
no dead-ends within this thin place.

Worn gray stones line the narrow way,
each pewter arc and coil shimmering
with sun-reflected dew ─ convolutions
twisting and turning on a journey,
folding back and forth on each other
like time, past and future swirling
into one, Α and Ω. Only now exists
on this transcendent trail, created
for the slow pace of pilgrim feet,
releasing my mind to run free,
to pray with sure and certain liberty,
to apprehend unbreakable blessing.

Sandals discarded, bare soles tread
this unbranching path to the center,
holy ground where no bush burns
lighting my blindness, where grains
of illumination stick to my skin
to be carried back to the world.

---

Maryella Desak Sirmon
Poet & Physician

Maryella has been published in Oracle Fine Arts Review, October Hill Magazine, Pulse, Delta Poetry Review, Deep South Magazine, Agape Review, and The Poet. She has poems forthcoming in Annals of Internal Medicine and the anthology, Florilegium.

Photography by Vince Kowalski