In Santo Niño de Atocha Chapel, Chimayo, New Mexico – a poem by Lisa Zimmerman

Featured photograph: Bulto of Santo Nino de Atocha by Felix Lopez – Richard L. Rieckenberg

In Santo Niño de Atocha Chapel, Chimayo, New Mexico

I don’t know what to think 
of the hundreds of pairs of tiny shoes 
attached to the chapel walls. I wonder
if they might have belonged to babies 
who were sick or who had died, left there
by bereaved parents and other family members. 
Later I learn that people offer shoes to Santo Niño, 
who walks everywhere on foot to help the suffering. 
Often it’s the people’s own children who need healing. 
The air in the chapel is soft and full of silence 
that follows prayer, or weeping. Sunlight leans
bright against the stained glass windows, listening. 
 

Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry collections include How the Garden Looks from Here (Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award winner) The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press) and Sainted (Main Street Rag). Her poetry and fiction have appeared inRedbook, The Sun, SWWIM Every Day, Cave Wall, Poet Lore, Vox Populi, Cultural Daily, and many other journals. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, five times for the Pushcart Prize, and included in the 2020 Best Small Fictions anthology. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Northern Colorado.