John Grey

 

This morning, in Providence, I awake

to my wife’s face and I think of

Angelina, the bleary-eyed saint of

messed-up sheets and blankets,

how her right arm flops over

and covers the breast of Brother John

who, while he doesn’t consider

this the joy of all joys, at least

prefers it to her ubiquitous snoring,

and then there is her thigh, the

former Convent of Saint Brittle,

nudging against mine and the current

occupants, the blessed middle-aged

moments in time stare out at lesser beings

soaked with rain, chilled by bitter winds,

up to their knees in mud and filth and

hungry as the Urchin of Babylon,

my ears half-listening as these poor souls pound

on the door, plead for someone to come out

and maybe shoot them in the head,

slit their throats, toss their bodies in the gutter,

anything to escape the raw pain

of living in the shadow of this house,

of not being the couple who reside within,

their dawn yawns, early breath, what they

consider a life, a place, far too good for them,

and I remember my heretic brother,

how he was converted by Amanda,

the Sunday school teacher, and how fluids

flowed from one to the other like the

blood of St Pius the Pious, and life came to them

in the shape of Abbey and Sammy

but haven’t repeated the pleasure

within this Cathedral-like abode

as my wife’s eyes open, a phosphorescent green,

an Arcadian brown tinge, at once in

the sun’s first rays, and I make a pact,

the same one as yesterday, that I will always

treasure this gift of Antagonistes, the patron

saint of relationships, as I roll over toward

the edge of the bed, lift my body on

spindly legs to the cold but beckoning floor,

to the sound of preaching birds and

spluttering radiators, praise-singing blood,

the usual window-fare of church and

traffic, hills and houses, even a touch

of love and lust that falls just short of

the need for coffee, a brush across the teeth,

the perils of the dream-buggy I call my

sleeping self as it rejoins the world,

from bed to the stairs to the Porta del Kitchen,

the coffee maker extraordinaire while upstairs,

the creak of a footstep suggests my wife too

has taken the plunge back into ordinary life,

supported by floorboards, watched over by a ceiling,

as she bathes her eyes in water,

appeals to the light for whatever pleasure

it may deem to give, follows the trail to where

a little affection, by common consent, exists in

fitful speech, but is clung to, referred to constantly

hi the spilling of sugar, the grip of a milk carton,

even small offerings of prayer in which we beg

that we never lose this for, if it has not given

me everything I want, it really does fill my needs,

even at 6.00 a.m., when I hold her briefly,

indulge myself with a peck on the back of the neck,

as if that’s how love checks in while sleep checks out—

amen..