Clarity Alongside Chaos

The wind catches in my giant silver hoops

Tiny vortexes spiraling past my ears

Wailing gently

Like a conch shell

Or a bubble wand

Or the sigh of my soul as I perch high in a church

for a God in which I have no faith

My thoughts vacillating from purest piety to deepest sin

From ecstasy to agony

On two uncoordinated sine curves,

Intersecting in a pattern too complex

for my mortal mind to comprehend

I give thanks for it all

I shiver with peace

I shiver with fear

I shiver with rebellion

I shiver with cold too

Yet I am content

When bells chime with incessant jubilance

Or wind channels its keening directly into my ear canal

I am overwhelmed with noise

And I hear the poetry

My mind is a storm in a teacup

A macchiato monsoon

Deliciously bitter, and charged with all the divine radiance of lightning

That parts oily charcoal clouds

for brief moments of clarity alongside chaos