Sonnet

you have lipstick on your collar I say

to my father the priest that’s just the Blood

of   Christ my son he replies by and by

(the milky thigh of   Mary in my mind)

William Blake’s eyes aligning in the snow

a statue outside London simply called

“The Heretic” where birds sit and shit and

live out their days in unconscious praise

of that third space between language and the

mute object as sunlight pours through

the stained glass at the Lincoln Park Zoo

where I saw the lions pacing and you

told me to always remember that the cage

is for the protection of   the captor