Poor soul
Patrick T. Reardon
Poor soul, old soul,
sign of the window.
Sign of lost soul,
track of lost tribe.
The woman’s flowers bloom
six months after her sudden final week,
an explosion in the parkway,
a chaos of untrained beauty, unedged,
as the father with the two-week-old walks past,
his face gleaming like a Pentecost,
like these crowded, tumultuous blooms,
the baby a deep sea.
The priest here this holiday weekend
for the mission-appeal homily
preaches about evil terrorists on his island
— he says he uses “evil” instead of “bad words” —
heathens who behead, kidnap
— he was taken as a highschooler —
bomb the cathedral, shit before the tabernacle
and do “bad things” to women
to gain possession of place and people.
He has, year by year, numbers,
a spreadsheet of outrage.
The weight of numbers burden my dreams,
and gods disguised as beggars,
and the bone gate.
The greedy you will have with you always.
Pure greed, old greed,
the lost greed tribe,
roadmap to and fro in the desert.
Take this all of you. Take it. Take.
I greed a listener.
I greed an empty wet clay tablet
in which to embed my triangular script,
my EKG, my teeth, my big toe print.
I greed clay for a life mask.
The mission Sunday priest is rich in numbers.
Like a state senator,
like a candidate for the state senate,
hungry of power.
He layers them like an atrocity lasagna,
tasty, righteous,
and the collection baskets are filled
with tens and twenties, loaves and fishes.
Through and with and in.
Behind the curtain, children
run down the halls of heaven
and tire and fall and cry and
are comforted.
By the dancing lagoon,
fields of a pink-white flower,
tall and heavily stamened.
Who will listen to my propheting?
Soul food.
Patrick T. Reardon
12.7.25
This poem originally appeared in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Volume 16, Issue 3, September, 2022.
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/.