Sketch 5: A Priest of the Faith

Many of the poems I write are only partly autobiographical or factual, if you will.  A Priest of the Faith is one such.

My father lived just up the street from a small Catholic Cemetery, mostly made up of French-Canadian settlers, and being Catholic would with his best friend, help pick weeds and what have you. At the time, the area was rural (as in rural juror). If you saw the location today you would have never guessed there were farm fields all about and that the area was once considered out in the boondocks. My father’s friend would grow up to be a priest.

My dad was quiet, but Father G. was a yapper, and would go on for hours if you’d let him.  One gets the impression that the Apostle Paul was a talker as well, whose fall on the road to Damascus is said by some to be the result of epilepsy. In old Ireland the illness was known as Saint Paul’s disease.

Father G. was, you should know, a collector of mushrooms, a food I love to eat but would honestly prefer to eat okra rather than pick them.  It’s not that I have any aversion toward manual labor (okay, a little), but I’m just concerned I don’t accidentally poison myself.

To be honest, I don’t recall at all where the “cursing the midnight moon” comes from – I suppose my imagination had him picking them at night. Perhaps, I was influenced by Thomas Hardy.

Sketch 4: A Man Fallen

It was a beautiful spring day when I went for my morning walk.  I was nearing my home when I saw what at first I wasn’t able to process: an arm moving about near a curb where a number of taxis were parked.  The motion was similar to that of Icarus in that famous painting.  As I approached I realized it was an old man who had fallen in the street near a curb where a number of taxis were parked. He had hit his forehead and was bleeding.  I tried to lift him but was unable to, and so I looked about and elicited help from a passerby.  We got him up and seated on a nearby park bench.   A woman seeing his condition went to a nearby kiosk and got some water, and when she returned began to clean off his forehead.  Should we call an ambulance?  Did he want us to call someone to pick him up?  He answered no to both, and what was clear in his beautiful blue eyes was that he didn’t want be a burden to anyone.