Capela dos Osos

The risen Christ stands magnetic
at the chapel’s center,
preaching to an audience of bleached bones,

the words reverberating off solemn ivory
walls and the cavities within them,
former housings for eyes, for ears.

Grooved pieces of macabre masonry
present history in stratal columns,
fate in arches layered like tree rings:

you are, and then you are not,
the flesh evaporated like vapor,
the remaining dust petrified into wisdom

and stacked high into an altar,
a beacon for skin and bone.