Spectrum
Robbie Gamble
Spectrum
A broad stained-glass rose window
perforated the south apse. When clouds
outside dispersed I could count the shafts
of emerald, ruby, Atlantic blue
those Sunday mornings
when the sermon bored me.
My heart neither lifted nor hardened
by dry Episcopalian wafers.
I sang in the choir, robed and surpliced
until my voice broke, and God
lent me to wander. On a Tokyo civic map,
one block of kanji is rendered:
Shelter for Persons Who Cannot Go Home.
A grace gets refracted in translation.
March 2025
Fundamentally
Blessed is the church service, makes me nervous.
—Paul Simon
A broad stained-glass rose window
perforated the south apse. When clouds
outside dispersed I could count the shafts
of emerald, ruby, oceanic blue
those Sunday mornings
when the sermon bored me.
My heart neither lifted nor hardened
by dry Episcopalian wafers.
I sang in the choir, robed and surpliced
until my voice broke, and God
left me to wander. On a Tokyo civic map,
one block of kanji is rendered:
Shelter for Persons Who Cannot Go Home.
Something gets refracted in translation.
April 2024
Fundamentally
Blessed is the church service, makes me nervous.
—Paul Simon
A broad stained-glass rose window perforated
the south apse. When clouds outside dispersed
I could count the shafts of emerald, ruby, oceanic blue
those Sunday mornings when the sermon bored me.
My heart neither lifted nor hardened
by dry Episcopalian wafers.
I sang in the choir, robed and surpliced
until my voice broke, and God
left me to wander. On a Tokyo civic map,
one block of kanji is rendered:
Shelter for Persons Who Cannot Go Home.
Something gets refracted in translation.
But not enough to make me disavow the stranger.
Or want to kill them. Can I hear an Amen?
October 2023
Process Statement
The catalyst for the first draft of this poem was the song lyric fragment from Paul Simon that originally appeared as the epigraph, which got me to thinking about my experience of organized religion as a young person, mostly in negative terms. As I worked through several successive drafts, I struggled with the poem’s title and the ending, neither of which felt like they were landing right. Eventually I realized that the poem was less about old resentments concerning my religious upbringing and more about the journey forward, carrying with me the remembered beauty of that stained-glass window. I realized the epigraph and the final stanza were both unnecessary, and the right title eventually made itself apparent.
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of the chapbook A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems and essays have appeared in ONE ART, Post Road, Salamander, The Sun, and Tahoma Literary Review. He is the poetry editor for Solstice Literary Magazine, and he divides his time between Boston and an apple orchard in Vermont.
“Spectrum” was originally published in Psaltery & Lyre in May 2025, where it was nominated for Best Spiritual Literature.
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