Deadly Vigil
Going to mass should be dangerous—
fallen angels, the real blood of Christ,
stations of the endless cross.
Here in the Quarter, a few tourists drift in
and look up, amazed by the size,
the peeling plaster of the nave.
A few mistake the confessional booths
for toilets.
The priest tells about a man who
was given the last rites four times,
a career criminal with dead, black eyes.
But he found the Lord on these
marble floors, knelt at this altar rail.
He works with the homeless now and visits
on Death Row, “The Angel
of Angola.”
After the final blessing, we file out
and shake Father’s pale, Irish hand.
A cop with a Glock on his belt eyes each
one of us nervously. Death threats?
Priests get them here. Altar boys
molested in the sacristy thirty years ago
still carry hatred, worse than any grudge
in the strongbox of memory.
The fortune tellers are out,
candles flickering on their tables.
Forbidden by the church, taxed
by the city, they offer more than
hymns, dusty prayers. Once a month,
witches chant beneath the balconies
to drive evil spirits from the humid air,
chant and fail.
One Morning on Decatur Street
I met him by the river, a shirtless, shoeless boy
with needle marks inside both arms.
His eyes were round black coins to nowhere,
a river of forgetfulness.
I thought he wanted money, a cigarette,
but he asked me to shoot him up.
His hand were too weak--I saw them tremble.
An old man with long silver hair,
thirty years sober, I told him I shot cocaine
in the 70’s before he was born,
long before. He thought I was blessing him,
willing to do what he asked.
I told him about the free clinic, the next
NA meeting, that there “was more beauty”
in a West Bank sunrise than all
the needle shots in this dying,
sinking town. He shook his head,
walked on towards whatever day was his,
sleeping on sidewalks, thirty-pounds underweight….
On my favorite bench, reading Homer,
I still recalled the electric thrill
of the needle, the wild impossible ride
to heaven’s gate. I wanted something more,
he wanted something more,
than a slow hot, morning, hunger and thirst--
love never found. Plenty was offered by girls
with skinny yellow arms, siren arms,
their eyes like round black coins.
Harvest
On the back deck, our host kept two mattresses,
one for him, the other a guest to look up at the stars,
ten thousand above the Gulf of Mexico.
My mother dragged me there, divorced, desperate,
wired on Dexedrine, dizzy from her own perfume.
Mr. Badham took pity on her, not me. I sat
behind them, slumped against a wet pylon,
breathing salt air and listening to the weird wisdom
of adults. Mr. Badham didn’t believe in God,
was lucky to be born rich, just lucky. Free to drink beer,
lie beneath the stars, he believed aliens planted
“a few of us here thousands of years ago, were
coming back one day to harvest and eat us.”
Was that any crazier, he asked, than a man nailed
to a cross, the promise of something nobody
“ever saw or touched.” My mother believed
in Jesus but hoped another man would save her,
a man charmed by her fake breasts, her dyed-blonde
beehive hairdo. She was always looking, waiting
for the phone to ring, the first date, the first greedy kiss.
And me? I wanted the aliens to land, then and there,
leave nothing on the deck but gnawed bones,
and crushed beer cans. I’d be the last kid on earth
and free to walk the beach, thank the stars that saved me.
Silver Alert
The last thing Uncle Al wanted to do
was give up his license, the final ticket
to freedom before his family argued
over his body, who the Chinese rug,
gun collection, rare stamps belonged to.
And one day he drove off, slipped down
the gravel driveway so slowly
there was no crunch or rumble loud enough
to wake his guardians dead asleep
in their comfortable beds.
His mind was like the wheel he turned
until his spotted fingers let go and the road
led to a dirt road, a farmer’s harvest fields.
He didn’t need a road as long
as the grill mowed down cornstalks,
the tires didn’t blow out….
He’s out there driving still in spite
of a county-wide search, tears of the living,
suddenly awake to their indifference,
an old man’s childish need
for someone to tie his laces, comb his hair.
He’s out there looking for the wife
he loved for sixty years and died
in his arms, put a finger to his lips
then whispered, “take care”.
He searches for the boy who never
combed his hair, ran away one night
and hid under the moon,
a cloudless sky, slept beneath
a wheel of autumn stars.
Home Burial
The youngest of the old ones died slowly
of cancer, asked if the sun had come up
before he shivered, winced, let go.
I knew him, a gentle man who kept stick candy
in a jar for me. Three summers I spent
on his farm.
And then the fight began. To bury a man
out of his house was the last act of love,
his family around him in the parlor,
the mirror sheeted. But his son
was in a hurry, said to hell
with tradition, wanted the false lights
of a funeral home, taped organ music.
Death wasn’t real to him, only television,
a job in the post office or the paper mill.
There were many bad words,
the first time I heard Baptists curse
and threaten each other
with pain more terrible than hell fire.
The old won in the bitter end,
and my favorite cousin
lay in his coffin, wedged between
the fireplace and cedar closet.
Six months later, his son tore
the farmhouse down, parked
a double-wide trailer in a field
where corn once grew….
Only death is unchanged, the taste
of stick candy in a child’s mouth,
my cousin smiling above the glass rim.
The Well
Behind the cemetery, in a narrow valley
where the first cabins stood,
an uncapped well waited for any false step
on brown-gold leaves.
While our parents mourned their lost ones,
walked slowly among the rock
and granite stones, we ran down the hill,
dared each other to fly with arms
spread wide, run without falling
to the other side. Once, our own parents
tested themselves, the foolish bravery
of the young, and survived.
They lived to grow old, men and women
bent like willow trees….
I ran every year and was glad to do it,
hoped I’d fall into an underworld
where you didn’t grow old, marry,
have restless kids who wanted more
than a hill of graves, voices whispering
the names of the dead.
Wedding Ring
A street cleaner told me he once found
a wedding ring in the filthy gutter.
“White folks blues”, he said, “the rich
so spoiled they get drunk and throw
away diamond rocks.”
I had one once, but didn’t know
what happened to it, though I may have
left it at my new lover’s house. She made me take
it off before we had all night
crazy sex….
I wondered if that woman ever came back
to Bourbon Street, looked for what she
threw away, all those promises
made years ago.
Maybe she gave up on men,
white veils and trains, drinks alone
like I do. One day soon, I will see
a man, another lost soul, take off his band
and hurl it in the slow brown river
like an offering.
Down there, in the black silt,
it will lie for hundreds and hundreds of years
until a diver finds it, wonders
what men or women wore it for,
a fossil rare as love
*****
William Miller’s eighth collection of poetry, The Crow Flew Between Us, was published by Kelsay Books in 2020. His poems have appeared in the Penn Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
