House of Worship

The soul in paraphrase

            --George Herbert

This sister stood up.  It was after amen,
it was after pie.  Wires had climbed, singing
through the wall.  Tin overhead eased the house
upward soundless as smoke, true as fire
at the tip of a steeple.  She stood slowly
like a yawn.  They found her holding
the backs of chairs, red in the cheek like a slap.
She elevated her arms and bent her legs
in suspicious ways; she wanted her toes
in the ground, never yanking free.  Like young
trees not in leaf, she was a sweet threat,
had the acre all angles in the sun.

Full-length she unfolded for their eating,
the parent who smiled, the one who scolded.
She learned insides of cupboards and drawers;
she charted warmth climbing radiators,
trusted in plumbing, the house a cylinder
breezing around her like a reed.  She lurked
in hiding like a joist, but wore the resting
place of every nail.  To use the mouth,
venture words, is to wonder whether
sound is the throat's or the dark's.  She swayed,
newly put up and straightened, in upstairs
windows, rippling the sheerness of night.

The years heaped on chairs smelled of wear as they
spilled their lively logic.  A hobbled one
had to smoke.  The one all groans cursed when she
tried to commiserate.  One smeared ashes
on its brow, the combusted church.  Year
upon counted year pretending like rugs,
shaken, beaten (grit in the mouth) to be
the same.  Steady the ladder on the landing:
Tiptoe, swipe the ceiling web.  It all goes up:
curtains, plates on shelves, the attic trap
swallowing steps.  Clean each spring and cleanse
a year--an organ pipe to pump with voice,

the prayer of habit, the habit a prayer.

(c)Jay Paul                             1999

from Going Home in Flood Time

The Ink Drop Press, Painter, VA