Love the drill, confound the dentist. <br />Love the fever that carries me home. <br />Meat of exile. Salt of grief. <br />This much, indifferent <br /> <br />affliction might yield. But how <br />when the table is God’s own board <br />and grace must be said in company? <br />If hatred were honey, as even <br /> <br />the psalmist persuaded himself, <br />then Agatha might be holding <br />her breasts on the plate for reproach. <br />The plate is decidedly <br /> <br />ornamental, and who shall say that pity’s <br />not, at this remove? Her gown <br />would be stiff with embroidery whatever <br />the shape of the body beneath. <br /> <br />Perhaps in heaven God can’t hide <br />his face. So the wounded <br />are given these gowns to wear <br />and duties that teach them the leverage <br /> <br />of pain. Agatha listens with special <br />regard to the barren, the dry, <br />to those with tumors where milk <br />should be, to those who nurse <br /> <br />for hire. Let me swell, <br />let me not swell. Remember the child, <br />how its fingers go blind as it sucks. <br />Bartholomew, flayed, intervenes <br /> <br />for the tanners. Catherine for millers, <br />whose wheels are of stone. Sebastian <br />protects the arrowsmiths, and John <br />the chandlers, because he was boiled <br /> <br />in oil. We borrow our light <br />where we can, here’s begging the pardon <br />of tallow and wick. And if, as we’ve tried <br />to extract from the prospect, we’ll each <br /> <br />have a sign to be known by at last— <br />a knife, a floursack, a hammer, a pot— <br />the saints can stay, <br />the earth won’t entirely have given us up.<br /><br />Linda Gregerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/saint-s-logic/
