i.
I smile, sometimes, thinking of how I liked the old Byrds tunes
Back in my seminary days, for I have come to know
(Mostly by these cucumbers, hostas, and ****** dandelions)
That there is very much a season for all things,
For our run in this plane is strictly proscribed,
And having the end date somewhat fixed
A blessing from God, in fact,
For it makes one focus on those things
That are truly meaningful,
To appreciate when there is need to make fine gradations
(For if you plant the peas and parsley just a couple of days,
Indeed mere hours too early, an unexpectedly still and cold night
May steal all of your labors, leaving you with tiny, lifeless shoots
Slumped over the lip of a clay ***)
And when not to waste sound and fury, as it were,
Over the most trifling of things;
For, when the final ascertainment is made, it will not be as an audit,
(Saint Peter himself staring over his glasses
As he punches the calculator,
Clucking as he reviews the number of bottoms in the pews,
The weight of the collection plate,
The state of the cement or flagstone
Leading to the stairs of the cathedral),
But an over-long movie, the seemingly most insignificant of scenes
Screened several times (if it please God) for your viewing pleasure.
ii.
For I have sinned, yes, most exceedingly,
Dear Saints and My Lord,
In lack of thought and foresight, in the expedient holding
Of my tongue, in the unthinking failure to act.
Mea culpa
Mea culpa
Mea maxima culpa.
Blessed ******, I cannot,
In the self-serving pride of my guilt,
Ask you to pray for my soul,
But I would pray that, perhaps,
I will have had the briefest of moments
Where I was not totally unworthy.
iii.
I was, at one time, a different lifetime to me now
Part of the Bishop’s diocesan staff in Boston,
Great city of pristine churches
Surrounded by blooms of all the colors He could bring
And shanty Irish rough as the day the boat landed
(One size Fitz all, the joke was back in those days)
I was more functionary than rising star in the hierarchy,
Nicknamed “The Bishop’s Travel Agent”,
My function was to find a place for those priests
Who had become , in the vernacular, “troublesome”,
Sending priests whose comforting
Of the younger females among his flock
Strayed over the line of purely spiritual
To some remote Aroostook village
Or, if such problems ran more to altar boys,
Some convent in the Berkshires.
We were, so I told myself, being judicious,
And all in the best interests of the Church.
One time we were wrong, horribly wrong;
There was a suicide, whispers,
Letters which should have been burned.
Many of my colleagues complained, bitterly,
That I had been made
An unworthy scapegoat for the Bishop,
But I knew in my soul such an assertion
Was merely halfway correct.
iv.
Yet perhaps I will—no, indeed, I must—be saved,
For our Lord is good, and Christ shall have mercy,
And exchange this long walk through foolishness and vanity
With life everlasting, even for those of us
Who have stumbled along clumsily,
Unthinkingly, unheedingly upon Your creation.
Kyrie, eleison;
Christe, eleison;
Kyrie, eleison.
v.
It is good, then; the days have been dry
And unusually warm, the nights cool
Yet without the danger of frost.
The beans and tomatoes should thrive,
And the sunflowers should grow
Well… like sunflowers, one would surmise.
As for myself, the good days
Are examples of His grace,
The bad ones no more than I can bear,
And the doctors (mere men, after all)
Minister to me as well as men can.
I have, blessedly, no trepidation
As relates to the close of my small one-act play
On this patch of earth.
Indeed, I am often cheered
That I have seen small green shoots
Rising from the years of fallen leaves
Which I have raked up and dumped upon the brush lot
Between the church itself
And the old graveyard at the rear of the property.
