St. Peggy Poem by r james sterzinger

Ah!
Catholic boy I once was,
Once and always one
Today I think of you, St. Peggy.
Dead these forty-two years,
Minus one.
You with sea salt green, or
Was it blue eyes?
I remember them only as being clear.
Clear as new ice
Clear as raindrops and tears.
Your skin, white and lucent
Like the souls of the deep
Like the drowned, washed out
Yet still possessed by beauty and time
Which is where you are.
Sleep, now. I will remember.

You and Diane were my only friends
Then, long time ago
I took an interest in you two
Having shook the dreams of first crush/love
Margot: dark eyed first grade temptress,
Who with dark hair and spit curls and rotten little teeth,
I pledged my soul to, and then quickly forgot.
A secret love known to my uncles who teased me over her.

Peggy, you and Diane would talk to me when no others would.
Diane, with big round cherub face and giggle
She your laughter, while you played the straight role
Only smiling..

That summer, I a boy of ten.
My mother called me to the backyard porch,
Needed to tell me something.
You had cancer, would not be coming back to school in fall.

We missed you that whole year, until spring
Though we prayed Angelus prayers
For you health, recovery and safe return to class.
That April, we were told you would be coming back
To ragamuffin classmates soon, and you did.
Your skin was even more lucent and white,
Blonde curled crooked wig on your head.

That Good Friday I prayed rosary to God and His Mother
Continuously all day: stared to the clouds
Never got an answer for anything that I wanted
It honed the edge of disbelief that I carry now
From church to church.

You came to school off and on.
We your classmates slowly watched you fade:
Then you were gone.
Your thirteen year old body,
Could take no more.

Before then
I had not known death
Not real death.
Except in farm cats and dogs
That were rabid or bounders
Of coarse there was Margaret's dad.
We went to seem him at funeral home
But, he lie in state, looking more like wax candle
than corpse of living breathing human.
I had never met the man until then, anyhow.

Now forty-one years later
Hot August afternoon I think of you.
Why? I don't know.
In middle of my own middle age,
thinking of my own death? Perhaps,
But I doubt it..
Then why? My depression rearing up for another
episode? Doubtful. No, today I think of you and pray.
For any salvation that may come of it.

Catholic boy I was, and always one
I know my hagiography
I know the saints,
Which stories true or myth?
I know only reliable saint
The one I am reminded of today.
8/13/09