Aurea dona

Simple and how the light filters
through the windows, a yellow
tint, it may be this season’s sun,
fading up north, brighter there,

but here is here, the Madeleine
in its shoebox glory, the women
singing and the brass and wood
instruments accompanying them.

I think about a poem just written
that sets out how love’s survival
is purely, inexplicably the magic
spoken of, invoked. If we carried

hope it was as faith, the same as
they bring to such a sacred place
with its triple portrait (plus Mary
and the Magdalene paired, a duo)

flat on like an icon, a Byzantine
touch amid plain Romanesque.
Your foot in its shoe is beauty’s
brief expression, always how it’s

moments like this when I want
to take your hand, to say again
how magic brought us through
the glittering sea, as they call it.