Santuario at Chimayo by Kim Addonizio
This was my favorite poem at the Palace of the Governors. I love the lines Even the tourists are hushed / by so much evidence of faith. I haven’t been to the Santuario at Chimayo, but I’m sad to say that I didn’t see any evidence of these lines at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, the Cathedral Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, or the San Francisco de Asis church in Taos.
Santuario at Chimayo
By Kim Addonizio
It’s so quiet among the carved saints,
the votives giving out, one by one, the old
Indian woman scraping wax and spent wicks.
Grief lights them again. Photographs
of the dead are tucked into the corners
of framed Christs, dogtags slung
from a punched-tin cross—Jaime Escalero,
his number and blood type.
And Catholic. Even the tourists are hushed
by so much evidence of faith.
In the room behind the altar
a small hole holds the dirt
said to heal. The blind
come here, and the broken-hearted.
They squat down
to take the earth
in their hands and let it run through.
Every afternoon
the old woman slips new candles
into their sheaths
and the random light from cameras
is like souls entering
or abandoning the world,
each with that same brightness.
