[John Riley]

High Church

I was unwritten. I was unsworn.
You’d see that after a moon in my hut.
We found him one weariless day at the end of the village where I was born. My young sisters scurried away. I did stay. He could not see me at first, so I lay down, spread dirt on my belly and waited a while. I made cakes of red earth and well water I carried, dressed his cuts and parched brow until beclouded eyes suddenly poured on me, teeming wise.
The hours bleated away like goats to the damp slaughter dust.
He spoke through the long uncertain slumber.

*
(My faith dragged me across the desert.
The beliefs I trusted to separate me
from the rage
cracked my sleep, left me here to die like a staked goat.
No amount of water or milk can quench my thirst.
I'm alone with piss and a clenching gut,
spiny shrubs, viper skins, vulture shit.
Left to die, all I have
is the old man's spite—
my final spit at God
though God cares nothing for my spit
just as he cares nothing for yours.
I enticed the mysteries I thought
separated me from the boiling knots—
the bloated, the intelligent, the insane
the last in the train—)

*
They flocked without cease just to take us in. Held their wives close.
After a moon and a sun, the elders asked me to carry his axe to the iron smith. I did so. Not my bread, nor my milk, could awaken him to me. I washed him with sand, frankincense, and herbs. Did not bleed for a blink, those crisscross gashes were burnt. They told me he crusaded, but I did not believe. In the end, he said “Mother”, I laughed “This is no mother’s breast” while I gathered his palms and face near. “Lambs,” he said, “Roses of Jericho”. He drank with abandon and deep.

When winds turned, I laid him down at the high end of the village. He said he’d return, lest he circles the desert again. He had writings in verse on his palms, and I did understand, in that barbaric tongue, that no burial keeps men unloved.