when the jews go to church

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last night the moon grew and we got gussied up.
i shaved, leanne did her hair, and liddy put on a dress
and the jews went to church…

to hear leanne’s oncologist (the one who posted on this blog)
sing.

we sat in the last row, fed liddy butterscotch after butterscotch,
let her draw chickens with broken legs on the donation envelopes,
and let the chorale set in,
an audience of bluish tiles applauded behind them,
a window to the right serving as a viewfinder to the cutout mountains,
backlit and black.

and though i’m listening to the songs; sometimes i feel
like a motherless child, how water under snow is weary,
the waters and the wild, the distances between a roof and sky,
leonardo dreaming of his flying machine,

i hear something else in the bright
and brooding voices swabbing the canvas of night
and wonder if it’s simple replacement.

long days in the hospital swathed in the arpeggios of triumph,
but more frequently the staccatos of shock and then
an almost endless reverb of grief.

it is, maybe,
a trip to the marketplace where he trades
one song for another.

and when you drown
out one song for another,
i wonder if the first song, in the drowning, dies.
and if so, for how long?

the man has three children, a wife, the life
of hundreds of people in his coat pockets,
and a voice as smooth as, well, butterscotch.

i like to think we can hear it among the 40
other voices in the choir.  that it’s easy
to pick out the release of all the things he cannot
say anywhere else.

it takes him somewhere on its wing

and

we go somewhere too, and then liddy says:

is he sick?

who, i ask.

that man on the stage. he has no hair. he’s sick.

no, he’s not sick, honey. he’s just bald. he’s not sick.
have another butterscotch.

and then we’re back.

—–

at intermission i take liddy to the bathroom.
she pees in the stall, of course, and me at the urinal.
she looks at the urinal, at the red mesh drain cover nestled inside.

what’s that? she points.

it’s a drain cover….it’s, um, so that things don’t fall down the drain.

like your feenis?

yes, excatly, like my feenis.

——

there is leakage of the sublime
in church, in the church bathroom,
everywhere….

if you listen hard enough.

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