By: Barbara Westwood Diehl

Let us be a diocese
of two,
not parishioners,
but a confessional
of cardinals,
each of us
red as papal slippers,
a clergy plumed
in tongues.
Let us be our own
absolution,
our liturgy a litany
of your hymn singing
to my psalm,
your hallelujah a chorus
to my every verse.
You and I,
we are a rapture
adapted for flight.
Let us be red princes
of our own northeast
Let us be whistling priests
in the sacrament of air.

Barbara Westwood Diehl is founding editor of the Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry have been published in a variety of journals, including Quiddity, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), Measure, Little Patuxent Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, NANO Fiction, Per Contra, Thrush Poetry Journal, Tishman Review, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.