JIM [MORRISON] AND I DANCE TO A GREGORIAN CHANT OUTSIDE BETHANY LUTHERAN CHURCH by Lindsey Martin-Bowen

Lindsborg, Kansas

 Latin lyrics with long vowels
 echo inside walls and reverberate
 from the tower to the front steps,
 where Jim moves in a slow march.
 No Shaman today, no swirling
 snake bending its long neck.
 Lifting knees to a steady beat,
 he’s a Swedish drum major
 conducting invisible
 Medieval string musicians.

 Sweet pear wafts on the lawn
 and hovers over benches and a red
 door, close to the turquoise
 windows by the apse. Above,
 the steeple’s so white, its iridescence
 lights this town all night long.
 I wonder about this place—
 this small town too far from a
 cathedral, how it creates peace
 by merging ancient sounds

 so holy with sunlit beams
 filtering through stained glass.
 I glance around. No one watches,
 so I join his largo march
 to music rarely on a radio.


Published in CROSSING KANSAS with Jim Morrison (Paladin Contemporaries 2016).

Lindsey Martin-Bowen: Last July, 39 West Press released her fourth poetry collection, Where Water Meets the Rock. Her third, CROSSING Kansas with Jim Morrison (in chapbook form) was a semi-finalist in QuillsEdge Books 2015-16 contest. A poem from her Inside Virgil’s Garage (Chatter House 2013) was nominated for a Pushcart, and Standing on the Edge of the World (Woodley), was a Top 10 Poetry Book for 2008 (McClatchy). New Letters, I-70 Review, Thorny Locust, and others have run her work. She teaches at MCC-Longview and dreams of Pendleton, Oregon.

December Editor, Pat Daneman’s recent poetry appears in Atlanta Review, Freshwater, Bryant Literary Review, and Typehouse. Her collection, After All (FutureCycle Press 2018), was first runner-up, 2019 Thorpe-Menn Award and finalist, Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award. She is author of a chapbook, Where the World Begins. For more, visit patdaneman.com.

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