The Sacred and the Ordinary

Dust coats everything on the oak shrine:

Green lotus cup, half-filled with creamy cold tea sits
beside the blackened spoon I liberated from Auschwitz.

Pen with the turquoise ink I love rests against
the smooth moon-colored stone my father smuggled from the Parthenon.

Buddhist chant that I like to say on my birthday leans against the window, wrapped in red cardstock
and a gold ribbon, behind the used teabag in its yellow ceramic cradle.

Green and amber polished agates that I brought to Michael in his hospital room as worry
stones while he lay dying

reflected now in the crystal ball that represents the clarity of my mind.
Gold glittery candles and a small paperclip abandoned near the taper on the left.

Small glass jar, corked to keep safe the earth and ashes from Auschwitz
that could but don’t likely hold atoms from the body of my grandmother.

Once, the shrine held only what I named sacred, objects I wished to see from my cushion:
the chant, the candles, the crystal ball, the stones, the relics from Auschwitz.

The ordinary lived elsewhere: on my desk, on the edge of the bookcase, in drawers.
Now I understand; everything is sacred.