Good Friday

Good Friday        

With the mud’s drying in the basement now,

the flooded floor is thick as sand.  Remember how

I dropped a bottle in the water (and there wasn’t enough

                                                                                                                water)

and all of what was

                                the bottle

                                the beer

                                                foamed at the throat and

                                                the laid bare

                                                neck split if not

                                                down the middle

                                                at least broke free

                                                from the body?

                                For weeks we smelled

                                a brewery

                                (I’d swept it all                 

                                aside and beneath, to pick up

                                later, maybe tomorrow

                                for our first spring dump

                                run)

                                At first it was amusing, tip-

                                toeing in my shoes

                                as though I were crossing

                                rock rock rock

                                from west to east

                                on a river thick

                                with sludge.  But when I dropped

                                the small white hand-

                                                                                kerchief,

                                when it drifted

                                off the top of

                                my folded load of laundry

                                and landed

                                monogram down

                                in the unfinished mud

                                I wanted right there and then

                                to throw the whole basket

                                                bras and panties

                                                boxers and oxfords

                                over the whole cob-

                                                             web infested

                                                                                low ceilinged flood zone.

                                                I saw the copper pipes

                                                                and their grey solder

                                                I saw aged and rusted hangers

                                                                (maybe the owners

                                                                before us dried their clothes

                                                                down here this way)

                                                I saw open and waiting baited

                                                                mouse traps

                                                                                (yesterday one was tipped

                                                                                free of the ledge, had snapped

                                                                                across her little back, and she’d gone

                                                                                stiff without my seeing, lips

                                                                                a smear of peanut butter, I saw this,

                                                                                picking her up to toss)

                                                And I saw (I see it often, but today I saw)

                                                                                the tarnished brass

                                                                                crucifix I’d rescued from my friend

                                                                                Ruth’s house after she died---I saw

                                                                                the who of it, the verdigris

                                                                                                that listed, alopecian green

                                                                                                like, across God’s face

                                                                                                and was struck

                                                                                                by my blasphemous  neglectful act:

                                                                                                                consigned here on the rock

                                                                                                basement wall, this small

                                                                                                                                (wasn’t it once high polish on an altar

                                                                                                                                and isn’t that church gone

                                                                                                                                now?)

                                                                                                This rescued bauble caught

                                                                                                at no time of day I’m ever there

                                                                                                in the quickening

                                                                                                light sliding down the lathe-

                                                                                                framed window, the one

                                                                                                that in winter is always blocked

                                                                                                with snow.

                                                Maybe I should make it

                                                like new again--the crucifix I mean.  Maybe I’ll put off

                                                                sweeping up that broken bottle

                                                                under the rotting coffee table (those legs

                                                                                                                                you know are the first

                                                                                                                                to break the flood)

                                                                and take it up to the kitchen

                                                                tug the cobwebs off, rub the polish across this

                                                                God’s face and make him dry

                                                                and shiny like he used

                                                                to be make him like new, like...