James Bertolino



My Cathedral



Were I a woman
I'd have a thing

to do: an architect I'd be
on God's business.

The high somber space
inside my cathedral

would be built of the silence
that comes only when a dying child

has finished her last
scream.


Copyright 1996, James Bertolino


James Bertolino lives on Guemes Island and teaches literature and prose writing at
Western Washington University. His most recent book is Snail River
(Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series, Princeton, 1995).