When The Bishop Called Poem by David McLansky

To say you died
On the service road
On Holland Drive
I gently laid the phone aside
As sorow stained my stillborn eyes.

Now I sit before your coffin
The mourners pause and whisper often;
I hold discourse with silenced lips
Cold brush your face with finger tips;

How many nights I watched you sleep
And prayed you wake and with me speak;
But in the shadows of out room
As you dreamed, I sat marooned.

How many nights I watched you slumber,
Vigil to your beauty's wonder;
I came a thief to steal a sight
Of what was mine by God and right;

How many times I touched your breast
How soft the mound I traced, I pressed
Filled with fear that you'd awake
And taunt, enraged, my coarse mistake.

There was no love, you once confessed;
I watched you slowly change your dress;
You married me for high position
The Reverend's wife has recognition;

You banished me from your bed
'You're sick with lust, ' you sneered, you said;
I prayed for your soft understanding,
I cried, I begged, I tried commanding.

A man of God, a paragon
Racked by lust and quite forlorn
Advising lonely, hungry souls
A shepard lost within his fold.

And you with proud and cunning eye
Watched me as convicted spy;
Rooting out my sympathy
For lonely women asked to tea.

Your rage, your wisp-fed jealousy
Your scornful look as I touched your knee;
Your glee in my embarrassment;
My shame for my beffudlement.

Stubbornly you preferred your friends
Insisting yet we still pretend;
Abandoning me at churchly functions
To attend your friends at private luncheons.

I cried, I wept, I begged for a reason;
My every word; a charge for treason;
I sought for ways I might atone
For sins that you alone had known;

In the end I gave up hope,
The only way I learned to cope;
We lived as strangers, business wed;
I gave up praying by your bed.

And now you sleep with silent breath,
Your angry heart at last at rest;
And I a lonely loveless sinner
With ten invites to widow's dinners