Penitential

There, in the maple's branches

beyond the window, light has gathered,

luminous for a moment in its passage

into night, in its clear and familiar

sense of diminishing grace,

what the priests for years allowed us

from one summer Saturday to the next,

so that while feeding the dog or setting

the table, we might well look

up to find the kingdom of God suddenly

come, and ourselves, in our sparest

and smallest duties, surely wanting.

Saturday rituals: baths, powder,

the scratch of starched cotton and linen

pressed in pleats, the evening

muted, shadowing our twelve-block walk

to St. Denis, doors beyond which

nothing holy-not a splash of water,

not air sanctified by prayer,

not the chill hand raised in blessing

behind the curtain-could keep us

good for long. We knew what children

know: how souls are riddled

with yearning, how they lift in the long

walk home, in lapses that flare

between streetlamps, in the descent

of dusk that even now, like any

other forgiveness, begs to be used again.