pilgrimage like prayerful
maggots up the insides of summer trash cans,
across the lids: they slowly herd themselves,
turning, tiny mouths lifted in song—
they cannot see! But that does not stop them
as they make their way toward a new Jerusalem.
Thank you for smiling through your statue’s paint
when I come to visit you in Adoration—
for liking me more than the world does.
You are home to me, not this artfully
messy office, 25-year consolation pen set;
not my widescreen TV at home; not even
football. I could cross my legs in prayer
like a yogi if I want. It would not matter.
You would pull the cover up under my chin
at night, sing me a song.
Let the world go on as it does; I will dance
around my older children, make strange noises
to amuse them. They may not understand,
but will be gathered in.
Thank you for today. Good things might
very well happen! A stranger could knock
on my door. A check could arrive,
students line the halls with lifted pens, confetti.
Someone I don’t know could cut my grass.
Sagrada Familia
You could see the Mediterranean
from the towers, the colored fruit,
the script; stained glass on fire inside, high
boles on pillar trees, all the creation,
elevation, cool space prayer could use.
Gaudi was in town too, where his angels
got fined for his every over-the-top attempt
to amend the human condition.
(“We need more sidewalk here.”)
But it’s always mercy, the people, isn’t it,
who finally make a trip? The guy
who tried French to direct lost us, our
first night in Barcelona; he left, only
to come back, help us find our hostel.
Picasso and Dali showed,
but it was the other Gothic Cathedral
that spoke to Linda and me: an organist,
as if on cue, up high and to the left
beginning her Bach as we came in—
a trumpeter, my delight, soon joining in.
And the people in Gaming:
the philosopher and historian hoisting tankards,
all the families, inviting us over for dinner.
(Professor Cassidy, in kilt, leaving
that semester, calling us “the dear Craigs.”)
And St. Joseph himself: the grounds man,
Maros—his family, his own Downs’ son;
priests too, Fr. Matthew, on the bus,
making amends for leaving us behind
in his mad rush for Mercy’s Polish shrine.
Campus children came over to sing
my shy daughter happy birthday.
St. Francis breathed Assisi, sure;
Anthony, delivering his delightfully
third-world Padua; St. Paul, inside-his-walls.
(And in Rome, when I had to pull my Down’s guy,
stuck, through a moving metro door.)
Europe was, is, thankfully, not America.
It breathes a different air, less cowboy waste,
more concern for the little things, for the fact
that they are all in this together.
Post-colonialist tact perhaps. I didn’t belong,
but liked the fact that they seemed to.
There’s no denying it: Austrians
kill their babies, too, but they so obviously
pay for it. You can see that in how kind
and isolated they are.
Who will ever save us from ourselves?
And when will He come?
The Vatican
They hadn’t time to sort the modern—
our Jesuit guide called it “mom’s fridge.”
(Besides, there was the matter of donations.)
I wanted to idiot time,
go back to the Renaissance tripe,
him noting that the painter had revised
900 times. “How many people
would do that today?”
By the time we got to the Sistine: ceiling,
walls of Marvel—comics, Thor and Captain
America’s abs, I had to tell him:
they needed to get down there,
make some calls.
The best do not deserve the rest.
This
