by Cheryl Anne Hale

Illumed by rays of Sunday sun, cathedral windows
of my summer garden raise my spirit in praise.
Early light slants through petals and leaves
beneath cerulean frescos,
cross-hatched with clouds.

Cardinal vines raise wine-red chalices
to lips of bumblebees.
Morning glories ascend, unfurling heavenly blues.
In fragrant reverence, a choir of Angel’s trumpets
bow like white-robed monks.

Butterflies, on stained glass wings—too perfect
and too miraculous for this world,
flutter by in vows of silence.

Hummingbirds probe honeysuckle’s luminous mysteries,
then buzz heavenward like prayers.

From sacred shade trees,
cardinals carol bright hosannas
while a wren tends her eggs in a potted petunia—
and I mistake a cowbird’s call for dripping water.

I hear a bell from the church down the street
and wonder who first imagined how
enough praise for all this magnificence
could fit inside a building.

Cheryl Anne Hale is a lifelong resident of Connecticut, and Poet Laureate of Middletown, Connecticut since 2019. She began writing poetry late in life, having spent her younger years raising her seven children, and working to make ends meet.