the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 495, May 7, 2004
Olegario V¡ctor
Andrade (1841-1882)
“They
were blind men describing an elephant, those first Europeans, sending back word
of the New World in terms of the forests and or swamps that lay a few leagues
beyond the tidelines. They had no clues to the heartland itself…Least of all
was any conscious of the great interior grasslands that lay farther from the
oceans. They knew nothing of that country and could not have understood it had
they known it was there—for grassland of such magnitude was wholly alien to the
western European mind.
—John Madson, Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass
Prairie
I’m off
to today to interview a bishop. It’s funny, how that strikes a guy who grew up
Catholic. Bishops, after all, were the holiest of holies—to a Catholic school
kid, at least.
A
Bishop came to our parish, and everyone, without exception, bowed down. They kissed
his ring. They showed incredible fealty and subservience.
These
are things foreign to me now. And yet, sitting here, I’m still struck with
fear. I’ve interviewed locally and nationally known politicians, scientists,
and thinkers. I talked to people who work, those who don’t. Criminals, saints,
and all between. None of them have struck me the way this guy does.
I’m not
frozen, of course. Just jittery. Maybe a little hesitant. It’s an unsure
feeling I haven’t had in a while.
I’m not
sure, but I think W. Somerset Maugham was right when he wrote that these are
the kinds of things that are in your blood and bones. Once a Catholic, always a
Catholic was not, as many believe, a factor of baptism and heavenly marking.
Rather, it is of culture, upbringing, and socialization.
Deep
down, there are nerves firing that say that this is the one who comes in clouds
of frankincense. He has met the man in the hat.
Not
only that, but behind the lifetime of Freethinking and Freethought, there
exists a remnant of belief that heaven is where man is accepted into God’s
grace and the man I will see today has the keys to it.
So,
that last paragraph is where the thought should end. But there is one more
thing: Fear shows me where ground is still to tread. It is time to go there. To
confront this doubt in my faith and make it right. To ask a man who is a man
the questions of a man.
That, I
suppose, is what has put the smile on my face.
three poems stolen from the neighborhood
1.
kids’ ball rolls down
empty street toward the old man
who stoops low,
scoops it up,
saves it from traffic
at the bottom of the hill
then, drops it,
rolls it a little
under the balls of his feet,
one foot, then the other,
kicks it back
2.
moonlight falls though oak
breeze heavy with grass and bloom
flecks across your cheeks
3.
mailman smiles, wipes sweat
from his temple
says it’s mostly bad news
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