religion

Closet Poets - Part iI

“Communion”
By Salvatore Poeta

He broke the bread and said, “Take, eat:
this is my body which is broken for you;
do this in memory of Me.”
–Corinthians, 11:24

Eternity is the perennial frankness of a palm,
extended from the sleeve
of this recurrent instant.

Luminous fingers collect
the tremulous flutter of a shadow;
its eucharistic flesh dissolves
onto the limpid palate of a divine nostalgia…

-The soul of oblivion.
-Amen.

“After You Have Gone”
By Salvatore Poeta

“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand
here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has
been taken from you into heaven, will come back in
the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
–Acts, 1:11 

After you have gone
a wisp of your DNA lingers,
floating off the wake of
the butterfly’s acrobatic flits,
settling delicately
onto the vapor of a breath
exhaled in winter…

“My Three Lives and My Three Deaths”
By Salvatore Poeta

O Lord, give each person his
own personal death. / A thing that moves
out of the same life he lived, / In which he
had love, and intelligence, and trouble.
–Rainer Maria Rilke

Last evening
while making my way home
I ran into my own death
who, happy to see me,
like an old long-lost friend,
stretched out his hand
just before disappearing
again
into the pants pocket of a passing stranger.

Early this morning,
staring into the mirror
while shaving,
my second death suddenly appeared,
just long enough to throw me a wink
before taking flight
under a sky drizzled with stars.

Here I am,
idled,
searching a distant, desolate sky
for my third death;
worried that he may have gotten lost
in a remote, dying galaxy;
or, perhaps, has fallen unsuspecting
into one of the bottomless wells
of hope…