On Watching a YouTube Video of a Couple Cutting into Cake
The ease with which the steel shovel
cuts into the neutral exterior,
it might make sense to separate things
into neat, consumable slices,
to make each piece
the same size and shape. And
celebrate such order.
Not everything, though, is
either blue or pink.
Sometimes the filling doesn’t go
with the frosting.
Focused as we are on the decorations
—a plastic stork, He or She?
in familiar colors—
we sometimes overlook
the center. Or fail
to examine our own. And miss
the layered truth.
Communion Since COVID
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower
San Antonio, Texas
What is bread without blood?
Or a Peace be with you
without the shake of a hand?
Separated by pews,
mantillas as common
as masks, we feel
so distant from each other
as we thirst
for wine that accompanies
wafers no longer.
At such times, I envy the apostles
their proximity
to the Healer: the way the beloved disciple
leaned against his chest.
The touch of his ungloved hand
to a kneeling leper. The brush of his cloak
by a hemorrhaging woman.
Each healed, the man killed.
Body wrapped
in clean linen, spiced with myrrh and aloe.
Sealed away in rock
hugged
by thick, cold stone.
