With Mercy For The Greedy

for my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confesson Concerning your letter in which you ask me to call a priest and in which you ask me to wear The Cross that you enclose; your own cross, your dog-bitten cross, no larger than a thumb, small and wooden, no thorns, this rose - I pray to its shadow, that gray place where it lies on your letter… deep, deep. I detest my sins and I try to believe in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face, its solid neck, its brown sleep. True. There is a beautiful Jesus. He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef. How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in! How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes! But I can't. Need is not quite belief. All morning long I have worn your cross, hung with package string around my throat. It tapped me lightly as a child's heart might, tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born. Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote. My friend, my friend, I was born doing reference work in sin, and born confessing it. This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.