Convert

So you are here?  Straight from that moment still suspended?

I can’t stop wondering at it, can’t be silent enough.

Listen,

how quickly your heart is beating in me.

                                                     Wislawa Symborska

Convert

Is this?

                        this—this

                                    o

                                                            o

                                                                        God

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                the total end of him?

How.  I want to know how

I’m supposed to shape this

                                    this

                                    this

                                                stuffed

                                                calm

Maybe I should turn

Catholic—at least

they are not afraid to look

            at Mary

            at least they have the decency

            to know

                        God’s not

                        the only one sucked through

                        the sudden holes in their hands

                        and feet

                        as though

            it’s been waiting

            all along, and shit! it opens—

            pulls everything in and then OUT

            with it—thing? one! every ONE.

I don't know what I'm saying.

I only know 

I watch them go to mass

I watch some women unwrap

their thin lunch on Friday.  Their posture

their face…they’re no different than..

                                    But listen!  I want, I want (sorry)

a Saint Anne—give me a mother whose daughter lost a son

who can sit and stroke her and say

this

            this

                        listen

                                    this is his

 this

            and

                        this

                                                            with a cross

                                                                        with a drop

                                                           

                                                                                    of water

                                   

                                                                                                to hang on

                                                                                                                        to.