Halfway North

black heeled shoes sink in the spring-batter Earth that takes,

that tallies, that deducts one more from the zero step; just step around

the shallow warren, where five baby bunnies wriggle in the warm black dirt

butts up, born and living and dying in this brief aside, this hyphen,

inside the sanctuary my friend’s father holds still in the coffin, my friend

looking a sad and glamorous movie star in a wig that chemo built

she grips her mother’s hand, together they receive the people in line saying

so sorry for your loss again and again they say it meaning her dad

but also everything, probably, so sorry they say, I say, say I,

for all of our losses for all of the things coming our way, coming

around the bend, heading for us like a freighted train, weighted cars of sorrow,

tomorrow will come with one and another and another

they carry the burdens right to our doors, full to the brims

eight women in sneakers sing the hymns, two are good and the rest are

there at least, a Greek chorus, trees or forest, one forgets

to turn off her ringer and of course someone pings her, maybe wanting to know

what’s for dinner or the Amazon password or how much longer, how much longer

wouldn’t we all like to know, the priest with a voice like Stephen Hawking

rendered as a singsonging Muppet intones the liturgy, “and also with you”

they used to say in the Lutheran church but now it’s something about your spirit,

I hear it, he says if you are not Catholic, come up for a blessing instead of

the body of Christ, you don’t get to eat him, you just cross

your arms across your chest like you are dead already

mark yourself so he knows you are not chosen and even if you’re chosen

he will still pray for you along with the dead, held hostage in purgatory

until your family prays you out, maybe you can duck out in secret

while the smoke from the wildfires in Canada smear the sky hazy like brimstone,

the priest says kneel and my friend struggles to bend, to twist his leg

under the pew and I don’t kneel either, I know I am a sinner

and so does God, I sit in the pew and I watch chosen people

eat the body and drink the blood before we all file out, orderly,

pursued each by our own unexplained bears,

dragging our forgiven and unforgiven sins behind us.