Shelter – Jonathan Douglas Dowdle

Come and listen to the floors
Moan out their complaints; we’ll record them,
Recite them with our footsteps
As we walk through the house
Remembering how we arrived here
From the twisted wreckage of days,
Surviving the flames that tried to eat
With lips of fury
Whatever remained of our faith.

Come and listen to the walls;
We will fill them with our voices;
They will speak everything back to us;
So let me tell you now everything,
We will lay faults aside,
I will use the word: beautiful, too often,
I will teach the ceiling to sing
With the heart of the sun
Until you dance like the stars, like the clouds,
Until you dance like someone
With the fire of life
Still burning at your center.

Come, and listen to our room;
It has a thousand nights of confessions
Written across every piece of furniture;
Our books have become tongues;
Our windows have become eyes;
Everything has become another expression of us,
How can we be silent?

Come and listen, listen to the house;
Listen to the shelter we have built
From our hours, our vows, our bones;
This is also our body, this is also our heart,
Ticking through each clock on the wall,
This is where we worship;
Let us bow our heads,
Let us lose ourselves in all the secrets
That come with the stranger prayers;
This is our life,
We’ve been sleeping, darling,
Come, come and let us awaken.

Jonathan Douglas Dowdle was born in Nashua, NH and has traveled throughout the US, he currently resides in South Carolina. Previous works have appeared or are appearing in: The Opiate, Peeking Cat Poetry, Pif, Literary Heist, The Big Windows Review, HCE Review, Whimperbang, Mojave He(art) Press, Tiny Spoon, Survision, 9 Muses, and various other magazines.