Snow covers a mountain church,
a stand of Aspens, my father's soul.
His spirit's lifted to the mountain
by a lifetime teaching in the desert below---
two realms separated only by his heartbeat,
connecting spirit to his Aspen Chapel.

An empath works in her office chapel,

healing troubled lives, wandering minds---Church
Of the Window-Washer. Clocks tick, hearts beat,
my mother watches struggling souls
striving toward enlightenment while working below
to turn minds from mire into mountains.

Peace doves soar over Mount
Ararat, alighting communion to our chapel
service where we kneel and pray below
the Crucifix at our son's baptism, our church
filled with people adoring our souls
for the nurturing of our son's heartbeat.

Obscuring the skip in my wife's heartbeat
as she holds him, obscuring her mountain
of pain from infertility, filling her soul
with the love of the people in the chapel,
God's love, sanctity of the Catholic Church.
Our son, miracle from heaven sent below.

I pray through the eyes of my dog, below
his gaze into the spirit world. His heartbeat
is my connection to an earthly church,
exalted in the wilderness, on the mountains,
in other people, their pain, and their chapels,
incarnate as reflection in his canine soul.

Embodied in our encounters with the souls
of snakes, owls, rabbits, wolves, of grass below
trees, bones below soil, fossil chapels,
armadillos, butterflies, earth's tectonic heartbeat.
Expressed in deserts, oceans, ecosystems on mountains,
stones in the foundation of a church.

I see the stained glass and the tree, souls
solid yet ephemeral---majestic, shattered like mountains.
The redemption of the universe is its heartbeat.