I choose this shell of a church because I want to see
what God does when He lasts more years than people
can afford. It’s an ordinary parish church, but large,
its tympanums and gargoyles drying out, holding on.
It is Sunday morning. On one side of me, a man sits down,
turning his gap teeth my way, wafting his body
like a thurible of cheap wine and bitter old human smell.
A woman slides in on the aisle side, pinning me in,
almost touching me, her face all one scar, vacant
from this angle as a half-moon. Her eyes sink
to asymmetrical wells, her hair floats in patches.
Under her warped mouth, another mouth, a smiling scar.
She sits against me in this vast space, a horrible
accident who probably can’t afford repairs.
It starts up. The old man knows all the words and says
them every one off-rhythm. A hull tender to the quick,
the face of the woman knows how to be exactly itself.
What am I? A child. Nothing but a child,
caught by my own grace, my own new smell. And here
comes God, creaking down the nave, level-eyed.