Ministrations
Once 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, attending the dyspeptic terrier:
everybody ten minutes occupied.
Once in Central Park, bowtie and tux
threaded into the dark, while that old letch
settled back in his bushes to watch.
Once in a handyman’s truck,
backseat, beside his furrowing tarp,
the loyal toolbox pitted with rust.
Then the rest—careless incisors forgiven,
forgotten, lascivious offers
turned down, the regrets—all of this
a host on memory’s tongue--
for memory is our choirboy, blessed
and blessed, thrice blessed into being
that innocent one
unaccountable for airstrikes
or to the bombed intensive care
where patients scorch alive in their beds--
to the huts of thatched earth
where the bayonet is gripped
firm in a twelve year old fist--
to the arctic tide’s rush
where the ravenous polar bear
claws apart her own cubs.
Oblivious choirboy, open your lips
as elsewhere, elsewhere a planet erupts,
and sing of your rapture
to this congregation of artifacts
absolved of past and future:
so elated, in one small
cathedral of time, at the array
of primary aperture.
Once 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, attending the dyspeptic terrier:
everybody ten minutes occupied.
Once in Central Park, bowtie and tux
threaded into the dark, while that old letch
settled back in his bushes to watch.
Once in a handyman’s truck,
backseat, beside his furrowing tarp,
the loyal toolbox pitted with rust.
Then the rest—careless incisors forgiven,
forgotten, lascivious offers
turned down, the regrets—all of this
a host on memory’s tongue--
for memory is our choirboy, blessed
and blessed, thrice blessed into being
that innocent one
unaccountable for airstrikes
or to the bombed intensive care
where patients scorch alive in their beds--
to the huts of thatched earth
where the bayonet is gripped
firm in a twelve year old fist--
to the arctic tide’s rush
where the ravenous polar bear
claws apart her own cubs.
Oblivious choirboy, open your lips
as elsewhere, elsewhere a planet erupts,
and sing of your rapture
to this congregation of artifacts
absolved of past and future:
so elated, in one small
cathedral of time, at the array
of primary aperture.