Heirloom: A Poem

31Dec07

This is one of Bryan’s poems. I won’t speak too much to the content because I want you to read it for yourself, but I welcome your comments.

Heirloom

I

The steeple
Vaults upward to a point,
Poised to prick
The grey quilt of the sky,
Until it bleeds
Daylight or rain.

Between the steeple’s summit
And swelling belly of a cloud
A pigeon is danced involuntarily
By November winds,
To the waltz
Of leaves chattering.

Inside,
I stand in the luminous sedative of
Dim lamps dangling from rafters,
And a little light from the outside,
That seeps in through stained-glass heroes on the wall.

Here,
In this place,
This recluse from the ordinary compositions
Of Monday through Saturday,
I’ve cleaned the grit and sawdust
From underneath my fingernails;
I’ve put on my best clothes.

II

He prays, and we bow our heads
Compulsorily. A reflex, a flinch,
His call. Our response.
Though my breath is shallow.

In this place of nearly unbelievable stories,
Entombed on the brittle pages
Of my fathers’ fathers’ Bible,
Played out on stained glass,
And told on maroon rows of carpet
Lined with candles, and swooning
With expensive perfume,
They tell about this poor man being made rich,
Though not in the way we know,
Having everything already,
We are hollow to the tale.

And there is another one that goes, “There was a prostitute
Who washed the Savior’s feet…”
But ladies like that live across the river
With thieves and killers, quarantined
With the distance
Of presumed moral high ground.

It’s true, there are
The Cains and Jezebels,
Hidden away on a shelf,
Well below and out of sight from
The gold-flecked, trophies of the immaculate.

As there are deviants
To mar every family line.
To make the pristine blush.
I was this.
I was the tarnish on the brass.

I would contend,
“You draw lines in shifting sands-
Windblown and scattered,
And rising in idiotic mumbles
To petition the Gates of Heaven”.
(Hypocrisy stems
From a swollen spot in us.)

But, from that spot in me that concedes
But swollen never speaks,
I knew,

That a smeary-eyed harlot
might be made rich-resplendent.
That a killer might be freed
To resuscitate the dead.

That my grandfather, in his ninth inning,
With a last needle in his last living vein,
Might have whispered a profane appeal,
The meaning of which, would have
Refreshed all the attendants of Heaven
In its glorious earthliness.

So, I think,
That the charlatan and the beggar,
The ruled and the unkempt
Sleep in the same bed,
Opposing images, occupying equal space
On the same coin.

III

The coin that I pulled from my pocket,
Was given to me by my grandfather.
A six year old boy, I dangled the coin
Over a wishing-well.
I dropped it into the unsolved black,
Made a wish.
Magic.
I’ve not felt anything like it since.

When he gave me the coin,
He explained to me, that the difference
Between rich and wealthy,
Is like the difference between
Free and Freed.

Filed under: art, poetry, religion, religious   |  4 Comments
Tags: church, heirloom, poetry, religion