The Church Clock Is Softly Ticking

The Church Clock is Softly Ticking
Orlando Lujan Martinez

The clock is softly ticking. The hours bid a gentle goodbye to doves cooing in the church tower and to the sound of a smooth white stone dropped into a well. A wandering breeze murmurs in the cloistered trees and in the flowers that wait patiently for the first glow of day. In the courtyard of San Felipe church, across the way, fragrance of damp earth and fraternal darkness mingle with the holy night. The roses sit in mute beauty, deep red nestled in green enameled leaves, beneath a dome of glittering stars and planets. In the starry night sky a full chalk moon shines down serene, whispering.
In the dusty church basement a mouse twitches its whiskers, round black agate eyes glinting, among the stored religious items of the past. Above in the church, where God awaits the faithful, a gold cross glistens from behind the pulpit and the votive candles, lit for a deceased love ones, flicker in their blood red glass jars.
Aeons ago we came out of Africa dark skins glistening, nature and spirit one. We are the roots of a great oak tree, and the faint ripple of a breeze on the face of a quite mountain lake. We are made from earth,water, air and then God created the spirit that gives grace and meaning to life on beautiful earth turning in the majestic star sprinkled universe.
Drifting over the rim of the night, bells faintly toll from a distant hidden valley, huddled in green trees, through which the pure currents of an august river rushes to the sea. Next to the river a lonesome road passes old barns, moon glowed fields, silent stalks of corn, and dim houses where the sound of children laughing is mingled with the peaceful summer, and the sweet smell of hay.
The warm glow of the houses pale windows reach into a dark yard where a. Calico cat walks softly in the moon shadows. The motherland spreads across the horizon into the engulfing darkness with its twinkling towns and mournful midnight train whistles. Just below the horizon the pure sun, source life, slants brightly across verdant fields. lengthening the shadows of fence posts and calling the rooster to herald the arrival of morning and Gods wonderful day.