Divine Office Hours

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Give me an inch. Let's say that prayer is good,

that prayer does good. I don't mind skipping how

since I don't understand my car, much less

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computers working without moving parts.

Invisible just seems a logical step

to someone dependent on electricity.

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It follows, if prayer does good, it shouldn't stop.

One line of logic leads to prayer wheels, then

prayer wheels in streams, grinding out good like grain.

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The West chose protein prayer, meat kneeling,

but there are problems. We have to eat and sleep,

have to do some work. Saint Benedict,

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a logical man, devised a relay system,

a set of shifts three hours apart all day,

starting at six a.m., one more mid-night.

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All noons were local then, so prayer would run

west between towns like a crowd doing the Wave.

This schedule is described in water words—

 

a cascade, a fountain, which would make sense 

to any peasant who'd ever seen a mill

channeling water power. Then Sanford Fleming

 

killed local noons because railroads need schedules

to prevent collisions. "Time zones," said Fleming, 

and hundreds of noons squeeze onto a single clock,

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dawn in New York, still dark in Kalamazoo,

but Sext being prayed in both at once 

instead of trickling west. Does this create

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a dam of time, some spiritual hydraulics,

compressing prayer until it can turn turbines?

Maybe, then, local prayers work like transformers, 

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boosting lower voltage into high?

Does prayer work like that? Don't look at me.

I just start the car, boot up, bend the knee.

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Kalamazoo Visits Saint Francis's Tomb

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Passing shop after shop of postcards, t-shirts,

statuettes of the saint, she thinks that Francis

must be to Assisi what Elvis is to Memphis.

Local boy makes good, and in this case

does good, too.  

                          She enjoys being jostled

politely by Japanese, Germans, turbaned men—

so many foreigners make her feel less foreign.

 

In the basilica, every couple of minutes,

a monk with a microphone booms Silencio!

Elvis read comic books, she remembers, so maybe

he'd enjoy these frescos, know some of the stories 

from his Sunday School in Tennessee.  

 

Maybe he'd be shocked as she is to see Jesus

demoted to supporting player leaning 

out of a cloud to chat with Francis. Maybe

Elvis would get a good son's guilty thrill,

when Francis sasses Dad back, jaybird naked.

She spots God's hand in that one, high up, small, 

and she's ashamed her brain croons Take my hand

smiles as it goes on take my whole life, too.

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A Story of Small Subversions

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Aqua regia: a highly corrosive combination of acids capable of

dissolving the noble metals, silver, gold and platinum

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You know that story about the King of Denmark

and all his subjects wearing the yellow star

the Nazis tried to force on Danish Jews?  

Never happened. The Nazis promised Denmark

self-government if they didn't fight back, never 

forced yellow stars on anyone. What is true

 

is that after the Swedish Academy

gave a jailed dissident the Nobel medal,

Hitler prohibited any German, 

Jew or not, from having one. Besides, 

a third of a pound of 23 carat gold 

would certainly be confiscated. So

George de Hevesy, Hungarian Jew

and chemist, took the medals of his friends

the physicists von Loue and Franck, dissolved them

in aqua regia, shelved the flask among

dozens of others and escaped to Sweden.

After the war he found his laboratory 

undisturbed, precipitated out the gold, 

and gave it to the Academy, 

who recast the medals and re-awarded them.  

                                                  And so I ask 

 

what makes this such a satisfying story?

No lives were saved, no grand examples set.

A story of small subversions. And yet. And yet

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I love wit hiding treasure in plain sight,

defying guns and muscles with learning, love 

the blend of spite, affection. And besides,

it’s the story for which we all yearn,

the one where evil’s beaten by smart and good, 

the one where everything we’ve lost returns.  

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But wait, there’s more. In 1993

a wave of hate crimes ripped Billings, Montana—

Jewish graves defaced and rocks thrown through 

windows displaying menorahs. The editor

of the newspaper remembered how King Christian

and all the Danes put on the yellow star.

So the paper ran a full sized picture 

of a menorah, and all over Billings

 

people remembered something that never happened,

and lived up to it, putting them in their windows.  

There were more rocks, a bit more vitriol  

but in the end it worked. It seems that courage 

like any noble metal can be dissolved, 

but also can be precipitated out 

and make a story true—whether it happened or not.

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The Flushing Remonstrance, 1657

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So the Dutch governor of what we'll call New York

demands that every town evict its Quakers.

(Over and over, bad men massacre. Smarter men

order citizens to do their dirty work.)

 

A committee meets. Edward Hart writes a "remonstrance." 

"Since the law of love, peace and liberty

extends to Jews, Turks, and Egyptians" 

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(Egyptians?) "so love, peace and liberty condemns

hatred, war and bondage." With him so far? 

Therefore can be a moral word—

     

"Therefore, if any of these come in love to us,

we cannot in conscience lay violent hands on them."

 

Bullies regenerate like starfish arms.

No shortage of examples.

Fewer cases of an eloquent, a gentle

resistance, and I hadn't heard of this

before, and I just thought you ought to know.

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Author's Note:

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"Divine Office Hours" was first published in Poetry East.

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"Kalamazoo Visits Saint Francis's Tomb" was first published in Crab Creek Review.

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"A Story of Small Subversions" was first published in The Southern Review.