Cathedral

The floor’s muscles ache for a nighttime chill 

like the darkness grown unseen in the center of a knot.

Lesser worn histories breathe century-old air:

tesserae too impossible to shine the ceiling,

stalemate in the rectory,

calligraphy in the mouths of painted angels.

My father, catholic gone missing in the density of decades,

stands up to the ambulatory with a prayer bulletin

and stub of charcoal.

As a boy he misunderstood the sin

of smuggling his crayons into church.

Little wax martyrs in his suit pocket

conserved the chest cavity’s tender vessels.

He insists that the saints

snipped the fingers out of their gloves

before coming to mass in late fall 

so they could practice smearing brittle black charcoal vines

in the pages of their hymnals.

They were never caught at service 

without something to make a mark

in case they yearned to sooth their fevered vision

into lines, lights, digestable planes.

In case they needed to confess

they were afraid of drowning in winter.

They are never pictured rising from the pews this way,

their faces and fingers blackened, nonetheless glowing.

.

To be charred without first being burned,

surely, is a blessing.  

I stand behind the sanctuary

and dizzy myself dripping down the lines 

of peach-skin detail.   I search the walls

for my father’s lines, or the chewed backbones 

of drawing pads he has owned. 

I wait on the steps for the father of children

I do not yet have

to pedal his bike to the top of the hill,

pasting scraps of the cold sky into his lungs.

He is binding a sketchbook,

saving up for a modest tin of pencils.

He wants to be ready in case he has something holy to say.