Poem: Corpus Christi honeymoon

Corpus Christi honeymoon

By Patrick T. Reardon

.

Let us honeymoon

in the Texas town with the Latin name.

Let us hide out together

under the sacrament’s cipher.

.

Let us head west into Texas and swing back

to wade in Gulf water, chary of jellyfish,

ugly as the thin plastic Walmart bag

in the branch of today’s winter tree.

.

Let us jacket up in the early autumn cold,

not hot Florida, not Hawaii bright,

our own clouded place no one else would think of,

medieval as the vestments and the ceremony,

two coals burning incense clouds to the heavens,

abandoned pretty much to the harmony of us,

our transubstantiation of body and body.

.

Let us foreign ourselves for a week in limbo,

watching TV election returns,

a relative’s midterm victory back home,

as if gazing from a pleasant Mars,

empty of going and doing,

capsuled, cocooned, changed and changing,

our own bread and wine.

.

Let us emerge today as we have each morning

since that vacant shoreside week,

together, to fresh surprise and communion.

.

Patrick T. Reardon

6.14.22

This poem originally appeared in America magazine on 3.16.22.