Four Poems

Jeanine Hathaway

The Left Hand Is Complement

Praise to my elders who are my left hand.
My awkward hinge, my elders-hand, the hand
that holds the wallet while the quick one
spends, the hand that hugs the bowl
as the adept stirs the dough, the hand
at the end of the bat for stable opposition.
The hand that wears the ring, my elders,
that says until death, that says
I do (I did); the ring I don’t wear any more,
that says this hand has a chance at wisdom
if not dexterity. The hand that, when I am
seated at God’s right, will be closest,
will brush against the hand of God
as we pass around desserts.

Noon: The Balancing Hour
Bastille Day, 1992

The bell rings over Ile St. Honorat
a single toll to call the monks from fields
of lavender and thyme, from apiaries
full-combed and dripping,
to wash and robe for prayer at 12:15.
The chapel nave fills with tourists
come to celebrate
all overthrown oppression, here. Ironic
place to do it, an abbey on an island.
To picnic on the grounds, to purchase
audiocassettes of chanted Office, packets
of herbs, postcards, honey, Cistercian liqueurs.
I buy an olive wood cross, its grain like
sweeping long hair. “Made by a hermit,”
the cashier monk says, and I who am feeling
especially alone, the condition of my secular
humanity, this day think, What is not?
and follow the second bell to chapel.
I have lived this life myself
years back and made my way now here, to spend
the day before vacation’s end. My daughter
Margaret across the harbor on Ile Ste. Marguerite
lies barebreasted on the beach,
the last chance, her long unruly hair pulled
back tight from habit and desire not to mar
such an expanse of tan. She to her name’s island,
I to rebuilt ruins—each true to her own.
The cantor on the Gospel side chants the antiphon
and as we sing back the response, he licks a knuckle
firmly where the honey must’ve stuck. O taste
and see! I remember that. And vexing distraction
when all you want is the wholehearted flow.
Margaret had a boyfriend wholly self-absorbed who
whined the worst of being a busboy was that
honey for the rolls seemed to travel during dinner
over salt shakers, ashtrays, chairbacks. When
they broke up, she paid a friend to sweeten his tables.
Halfway around this world and the next,
at the closing of Office,
the monks by twos genuflect, make
their Profound Inclinations, and process
to the refectory, to stoneware bowls of black
bean soup, baguettes and cheese, the garlicky
odor of sanctity. Over baskets of fruit,
their desserts, a humming nimbus, the bees
still unsatisfied are waved off, out the leaded
watery windows to where the monks will be
once they return to their cells, hang those voluminous
habits on doorpegs, and meet at the shed for shovels
and hoes, the compost forks that turn waste
back to dirt, the sweet yoke that connects
and in that connecting makes us free.

Walking My Baby Back Home

Good Friday the church has to get rid of Jesus.
The world is bereft. We consume all our hosts.
The priest gives me two; I pocket one, a dying
god’s last wish. Or an ex-nun’s chance
to show him around. On the walk home, I frame him
loosely in my palm, flash him at things any one
of my friends might enjoy after long convalescence or
a sudden release from a job.

Here’s a familiar sycamore tree. This is called a bike.
Three families live in that house; they are not related at all.
One family lives in this one. Yes, I know they could
shelter some homeless. (If you prick my conscience,
I’ll eat you.) The driveway ahead is ours.
Come in. Do you recognize yourself here?
Three glow-in-the-dark Baby
You’s afloat in holy water. The desk where I think
about nothing or us will be where you stay
propped against an amethyst—purple, liturgically apt.

I’m sure he’s glad to be with me,
so I doze on the sheepskin floor.
When I awake around suppertime
and he’s still helpless there,
I come to consider the scandal,
prolonging this last afternoon of his life.
We both know I can’t keep him here,
can’t save him from dislocation.
Though my ceiling is cracked,
no voice edges through with new rubrics.
I am left with God- or mother-wit
and take him as I would a friend
to rest beyond my lips in a dark place
where death is another word for union.

Wonder Bread
“Hocus pocus”: corruption of
“Hoc est enim corpus meum”

One teasing April day the mad priest
approached a bakery truck and prayed
the words of consecration. The driver,
a parishioner, called the bishop to buy
every biscuit, loaf, and bun; the whole
cargo, the Body of Christ.
If that priest is still loose
changing substantially everything
he knows he knows how,

what if no one overhears? Kids will
eat those sweetrolls and stop
their breakfast fight; a man slipping
the sandwich from his sack will find
his union dues; the student
over midnight toast sees life and major
work; imagine the flap and chatter aloft,
full of breadcrumbs, the birds.

Visit Jeanine Hathaway as Image Artist of the Month for October 2001

Issue #22 • Winter/Spring '99