Mecca tastes like coffee

Mecca tastes like coffee

Cloud cover
is heavy today
drive fast enough
to outrun the rain
make the pilgrimage to that place
you’ve always liked
where it never hits you
where you feel right

I feel the fog clear
when I walk in
the way absolution gets rid of sin
I like everything I see
and hear
I feel my blood flowing
and my lungs fill

Kiss the beads
like a rosary
touch the walls
drink the sound
nothing here brings me down

Sacred, I appreciate
sacred can take so many shapes
and is only as sacred as we make

I don’t speak prayers right now
not that I can’t
or don’t know how

Not that I need stained glass windows
or hymns
because I don’t
and never did

Once I’m here
I have room to feel
sometimes just feeling
feels like enough
and it’s all you have to offer up
there are some things words just can’t touch

Sanctuaries
exist wherever
little altars appear
lifting precisely the thing you kneel
perceiving creates
and makes them real

Nobody said church bells had to ring
Mecca can taste like anything.