Ministrations
Here undertaken
with a face uplifted to Empire State:
drinking the glimmering spire and span.
Once by the campus lake,
back flat on a bench, lying prone to faint
spurts of a Milky Way sky.
Once on the living room loveseat,
our host outside, tending to that dyspeptic terrier:
everybody ten minutes occupied.
Once in Central Park, bowtie and tux
threading into the dark, while that old letch
settled back in the bushes to watch.
Once in a handyman’s truck,
backseat, beside a furrowing tarp,
the loyal toolbox pitted with rust.
And then the rest—careless incisors forgiven,
forgotten, lascivious offers
turned down, some regrets—all of this
a host on memory’s tongue--
memory our choirboy, blessed
and blessed, thrice blessed into being
that innocent one
unaccountable to these airstrikes
or to a bombed intensive care
where patients scorch alive in their beds--
to the thatched huts of earth
where bayonets are gripped
securely by twelve year old fists--
to the arctic tide’s rush
where the polar bear, ravenous
claws apart her own cubs.
Oblivious choirboy, open your lips
as elsewhere, elsewhere a planet erupts,
and sing of your rapture
to a congregation of artifacts
absolved of past and future,
so elated, in that one small
cathedral of time, with its array
of primary aperture.