Patti

(one)

Fat Patti the Adventist,
that sweet tub, big as seven days,
with the diseased fur coat and rotting teeth
is at my Sunday door again with Scripture.
Her game plan is grace.
Good idea in good weather, I think.
We talk, but communion can’t be bought.
There are always differences.
I have to be truthful with her:
“I haven’t let go of my first, early God yet,
a red bicycle with thick black pedals,
the first ground my feet ever owned.
I’ve tried but I can’t do it.”
She tries to let me down easy,
agrees it’s a tough one, smiles,
gently reminds me there’s only one God.
I think about this and wonder
if it will jump-start my heart
like the red bike.
I tell her my main interest in Heaven
is what the soil is like: are there bike paths?
Patti says she’ll look into it and get back to me
and I believe it, I have faith in her.



Patti

(two)

Patti stops by with a pamphlet,
more ‘good news’ about
that damned Appointment.
I’m not in the mood but
I wonder what she’s wearing.
Honest to God, tennis shoes,
a tent-sized burlap dress and
a narrow black hat piece
with artificial cherries on it,
the kind Ida Lupino wore in ‘46.
She hands me the pamphlet.
There’s a picture on it.
It says, “Your peaceful new world.”
Men with smiles of smooth lumber
build a seamless house on a pastured hill.
In fields of bright vegetables
clean children from each race
play together politely with the
nice Lion, Bear, and Gorilla of choice.
Smiling mothers with unwatchful eyes
pick happy strawberries while geese
fly single-file over their heads like acolytes,
there isn’t a cloud or crow anywhere.
It’s an idiot’s bounty.
Patti says something about there
being plenty of room for bike paths
but I’m looking at the men, women, children.
Then I blurt it out, “Do you think,
I mean, is there sex there?”
A startled look and then dismay
crosses her face, and then it falls.
She is disappointed in me, I can tell,
the way she says she doesn’t know,
the way she walks away from my door.


Patti

(three)

Patti’s back. It’s Sunday.
She’s arisen and returned
fresh as a new promise in
a blue sack dress with white flowers.
I don’t answer the door this time.
I’m thinking of my Uncle George
toward the end, after the cancer’s deciding
cells had voted against him.
“Well, I have someplace to go,
better get on with it,” he said,
like it was another B-17 mission
with an element of risk.
I was twelve, but I saw his face.
There was no mission,no orders for anything