Our Lady, Burning: A Response to the Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral

A fire has broken out at the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  The roof structure, built in the 13th century and called 'the forest', is lost, and the spire has fallen.  I've been following live updates on CNN with a heavy heart, and I wanted to share my thoughts on this sad event.

Our Lady, Burning

She is many things, and one.
Every eye that rests on her tranquil face
brings something new,
someone loved.
I bring frosted glass and opaque eyes,
age-softened hands and an abrupt laugh
and a faith I never felt
but which has a claim on me nevertheless.
I also bring a source of story and song,
a familiar edifice against a sunset of dreams,
glinting glass roses and stony whispering air
and the bells, bells, bells.
Ours.  Always she is 'ours'
and yet unclaimed, unpossessed.

Today she is on the pyre.

There is a silence across the river
that I can hear across the ocean.
I can see the tears falling
from eyes that cannot look away.
The smoke that shrouds the city of lights--
I can taste it.
I was but one set of shuffling footsteps,
one child searching her shadows,
and yet I am a part of her,
and as her forest falls
and her prayers are drowned by alarms,
I, too, grieve.

But the hand raised against her--
be it careless fate or cruel faithlessness--
will not change her,
for hymns will rise higher than the smoke.
Though we mourn--oh, how we mourn!--
voices are already lifting in hope,
saying words such as 'rebuild' and 'faith'
and 'together.'
Our lady's face remains tranquil,
for she is many things still, and still one.
To lose part of the many does not diminish her,
and love burns more fiercely than any flame.