We’ll head to church in a few hours,
but first, I visit my sanctuary.

The pews are dew soaked lawn chairs,
bought used from Craigslist.
(We made sure we had enough for everyone,
but most of our monkeys prefer
carefully picking their way
along the tight rope railing,
the daring ones leaping into the grass nets below.)

The hymns are heard in the rumbling
of trucks on the interstate,
burning not incense,
but the remnants of dinosaurs.
They’re heard in the songs of the birds
calling out to one another their melodies
of survival, of hunger, of love.

My fellow congregants include the father
pulling his two young children in a wagon
while walking the family dog.
It’s the young man throwing Sunday papers
onto porches,
perhaps imagining they’re something more exciting
than opinions and advertisements.

The adornments in this place are less
stained glass and ornate carvings
and more
gossamer spider webs,
leaves in their final weeks of green,
final blooms on the neighbor’s rose bushes.

It’s not a church,
but it’s a sanctuary.