My plane was late—I've missed the evening Mass;
So now I take a walk and try to pray.
The sky is vast, a dome of marbled glass
Where shoals of vapor slowly drift away.

The first few stars ride in the rifts of blue.
Again I wonder at the grand conception
That must have so intoxicated You
At the world's indeterminate inception.

And now I breathe the atoms of the air
That Jesus gasped in words so long awaited
Since the stars shaped them in their fiery glare
To be the sound of “It is consummated.”

And this warm flesh that breathes God's dying breath
Is no less of His substance, or His death.