in the library and
I hear the church bells ringing.
I could be a child again
standing on my grandparents bright lawn
in mid autumn, breeze combing my hair and
numbing my ears, listening to the church
down the road tell me the time.
all my life, all my life, all my life
I am there.

I could count on my hands
the times I’ve been to church.
funerals and wakes and baptisms.
I was never dunked in the water,
never had my bald baby head
smoothed by the hand of priest.
I’ve never drank the wine or
taken communion. never wore
a white dress to make a baby promise.
I don’t know what any of it means.
my father used to tell me bible stories like fairy tales.
my father who ran off the stage at his confirmation.
my father, my father, my father.
I’ve had no other father.

my parents weren’t married in a church.
they were married in a banquet hall,
my mother several months pregnant.
I go back to it now to deposit my checks,
they made it into a bank. what does that mean?
each year we hang the key to their suite on the Christmas tree,
a Christmas that means things that my father’s did not.

when I was 13 I read the story of babel
and got angry. all that hard work
gone to waste.