No God in Us but Song

Bored in the balcony reading your novel

hoping it will keep me awake — 

religion was always a blind spot — 

with my Sunday headache waiting for the service

to finish so I can retrieve my little chorister,

no god in us but song, while

pale important teenage Sophia

in blue head chorister ribbon,

face dumpy as a Flemish burgomaster,

bosses littler kids and loves

leading them expressionless

in paired rows from the choir stalls,

holding the processional cross high,

shushing and huffily eyeing them

for babyish disregard of cleanly neatness,

my own chorister dripping orts of tissues

she stows in her sleeves for sniffles,

in the choir room struggles

out of her ruff ringed dark brown inside

from years of child chorister sweat, hair oil, dead skin.

Me: Your other ruff was white and clean!

Her: Sophia said it was too big.

I think Sophia changed since she went to high school.

Service over, ruffs and black robes

dangling awry from a clutter of hangers,

restored to bright colors the kids bang

out swinging doors to shout among gravestones,

delicate stems of ruffless necks

bare to autumn sun, leaves hurrying out of trees,

leaving Sophia alone striving with their robes,

sighing out her burdens in a way

she could only have learned from a mom.

 

I sang twice in church when I was a kid.

First time with Katrina and Dona — 

Dona and I white, Katrina black — we

called ourselves the Albanettes, mostly sang

strident show-tune medleys, jingled-up folk songs — 

one day were messing out carol harmonies

at Xmas in a nursing home, the inmates

nodding, tapping, sleeping in their chairs

when Katrina said come to my church,

they never heard singing like this.

At Katrina’s storefront

the praying, swaying and testifying rose up

as we opened our mouths to twine

our voices so they burred and shone together like silver spoons

then guitar, drums, keyboard shimmerchords

surrounded and supported our Gloria,

Echoing our joyous strains, Glo-o-o-o-oria

the first time I felt sex in my sweat,

the congregation clapped rhythm and counterpoint

R&B-ish shivers and thrills.

Dona’s single mom came along

to drop us off but stayed the whole service,

amazed and beside herself

dabbing fingertips into her hair cried

thank you thank you for your hospitality

the same smell in her sweat,

embarrassing us, squeezed in at the end of the pew.

The second time, the Albanettes and whole community choir

sang Messiah at the Catholic cathedral from beginning to end;

while the solo basso rolled out Thus saith the lord

sounding like Paul Robeson doing Ol’ Man River

and snow came down outside

and I will shake all nations

Dona, Katrina and I couldn’t, could not

stop giggling, was it the little girl

down front with her mouth wide open

gawping lustless love at the basso,

we giggled harder, was it the river pouring from his mouth,

hard to stay soundless as he rumbled, our giggles

birthing new giggles till we sweated and wept

our mirth, our noses gushed, our bodies shook

... whom ye delight in; behold, He shall come ... 

 

Sophia’s mom stops me exiting to say

You’re doing the right thing

I cough into a tissue.

We have not loved You with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves,

I think the communal confession goes,

not that I was listening.

The morning’s scripture lesson:

raising the citywide minimum wage.

Not that I was listening. Though I agree.

If I kept singing maybe I could keep you here.

The phrase has dark in front of it,

darkness after it, dark riddled through it

like whatever isn’t sparks in a bad connection.

Do you mind I put your death in the poem.

You can put the wife from hell in your stories.

All the women in my stories are the wife from hell.

If I kept singing I could keep you here.

We’re atheist, in it for the music education

I don’t explain to Sophia’s mom,

my Sunday headache lifting, my book closed on my finger,

my particular chorister running the graveyard outside the church

among stones of colonists — low humps

crumbling to soil — climbing the cenotaph

dedicated 1971 to Wabash, Piankeshaw

and six other chieftains who gathered, 1793, in the city,

to negotiate against George Washington’s land-stealing treaty,

whereupon, dying of smallpox — some people think the chiefs

were only invited because the white men knew

they were likely to die of white man disease — were interred

unknown places in our churchyard, graven

image of their frilly headdresses

signaling tribal-spiritual affiliation.

Me, to my husband, 30 years older:

I’m afraid I’ll lose you, to death or divorce.

Him: You’d rather I divorce you? or die?

Me: Divorce of course, we could still

Comfort ye, my people ...    

my chorister daughter pretending a basso, chin shoved

way down into her neck to manage it, up on the graveyard wall on the far side,

and lonely Sophia in the shadowy indoors, unsnapping

the ruff of a straggling treble chorister,

stroking it neat, gently folding it away

as her tired mother nags hurry, hurry up please.