Alleluia steeples

By Patrick T. Reardon

 

Give me two mule-loads of

mud flooded with the Lord God,

the water in which I washed,

plunged seven times,

gagged, splashed, amok,

spluttered, my flesh like

the flesh of a child,

uncleanness now whiter than snow;

 

The baby sleeps in the upper room.

The bread is broken in the upper room.

I climb the stairs to the upper room.

 

We store the box of photographs,

each a song, in the upper room.

Look, light from the upper room

stabs the dark.

 

two mule-loads of river silt,

caress of current, mountain to bay;

 

Workers dismantle the upper room table.

Upper room fracture,

upper room consternation, upper room belief.

The upper-room hymns.

 

of dry beach sand, insected, footed, garbaged;

 

Open the tabernacle

in the wall safe in the upper room.

Hear confessions in the upper room.

 

Elk clopping before the altar.

 

two mule-loads of dust from

the home he abandoned when

he stuttered his way out the back

door with the trigger.

 

I chew my brother’s ashes until I choke.

The baby breathes and alleluia steeples.

 

 

Patrick T. Reardon

6.23.20

 

This poem originally appeared in Meat For Tea, Volume 14, Issue 1, March 2020.

Written by : Patrick T. Reardon

For more than three decades Patrick T. Reardon was an urban affairs writer, a feature writer, a columnist, and an editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000 he was one of a team of 50 staff members who won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Now a freelance writer and poet, he has contributed chapters to several books and is the author of Faith Stripped to Its Essence. His website is https://patricktreardon.com/.

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