Church Building Poem by Joe Bisicchia

In our family parlor, children laugh and look at me, their Daddy.

Papa, show us God with your hands, and from where God sends words like kites unbothered through the breeze, through the trees and seas, and sees. Where, Papa, show us where God lives and where God breathes.

And I think of what I can hold. And so, I shall again teach. And maybe from their innocence, maybe even learn what a hand can hold, what it can lift. We grownups love our children and sincerely want them to know our divine wisdom, as if knowing God is our gift. And so we somehow show them how to worship. We shape our large hands to pray, and then intertwine them to play, and with a twist in this gestured game we surprise their eyes with an epiphany.

And this, again for them I now do quite plain.

Near the palms, my fingers dangle as people within this handed down church. Just two hands together, not heavy handed, just my two small hands together, together making with hands a house of worship. Grownups may do this or something similar the world round, together making our hands depict our fingers as worshipers.

And our little innocents ask for us to do it again. And again. And then they do it too with their innocent hands. The rhyme as pews goes as planned. But soon they are the ones to ask if God can fit in our hands as we continue our contortion. Oh, Lord, if I am grown and wise, how would I make mine that way Thine?

And then, by the real church the children are the ones to see the outside homeless man, cold and contorted. Yes, again the inescapable misplaced homeless man. There he is, so close at hand.




Published by Anti-Heroin Chic,2018