The unwritten witness

This poem speaks
though none will claim to hear it
to Peter and to those who built upon his name,
to priests robed in certainty
and altars heavy with tradition.
It does not mock the kneeling soul,
nor scorn the searching heart,
but it questions the hands that guide them,
and the voices that claim the keys of heaven.
This poem walks through chambers of doctrine,
through councils carved in stone and silence,
where truth was debated,
and sometimes buried beneath decree.
It remembers the guarded book,
the word withheld,
the sacred made distant
from the common tongue.
It lingers in the echo of the mass,
in the solemn utterance
“hoc est enim corpus meum”
and wonders why the cross
must be relived
by ritual
when its cry once declared, It is finished.
It will speak of purgatory’s fire,
of indulgence weighed and sold,
of sins divided neatly
mortal, venial
as though eternity could be measured
by mortal scales.



It will speak of confession,
of whispered guilt before human ears,
and ask where mercy ends
and mediation begins.
It will lift its voice toward thrones
toward decrees stamped with heaven’s claim—
and ask if infallibility
can dwell in flesh.
It will speak of Mary,
honored, exalted
and quietly ask
when honor becomes devotion,
and devotion becomes something more.
This poem walks through history
past empires baptized in ambition,
past crosses raised before conquest,
past sanctuaries of marble and gold
where presence seemed absent.
It will remember voices
some silenced, some defiant
men who stood against the current
and fractured the stillness of centuries.
Yet it will confess this too:
that reform did not end the struggle,
that error is patient,
and truth often stands alone.
This poem weighs salvation
not as a balance of “and,”
not grace and effort entwined,
but as something either given freely
or lost entirely.
It will speak of authority claimed,
of crowns placed by hands that tremble,
of a church that stepped into power
when empires fell.
It will name corruption without hesitation,
and devotion without dismissal
for both have walked side by side
through the ages.
This poem will not be welcomed.
It will be called dangerous,
misguided,
even mad.
It will be dismissed
before it is understood.
It will be hated
not because it is loud,
but because it refuses silence.
Yet it does not come to destroy.
It comes to awaken.
To stir the quiet unrest
hidden beneath certainty.
To press upon the conscience
that resists being moved.
It wounds
but only where healing is possible.
It points beyond itself,
beyond walls and names and systems,
to the Man
Jesus.
Unrepeated.
Unshared in glory.
Unassisted in salvation.
Sufficient.
This poem will not be written,
and yet it endures.
Not on parchment,
nor in sanctioned speech,
but in the mind that questions,
in the heart that hesitates,
in the soul that dares to ask—
What if?
And there it remains
unspoken,
unwelcome,
undeniable.
This poem was never written.
And yet,
you have just read it.