brooke carlton

Madonna of Humility

I look for you in the same

city that we conquered years ago

as heedless crowned heads filled up

with drink and with folly,

too consumed with our own 

good fortune to realize the squalor

ascending with the harbor’s foam

before us.  I look for you

on even blocks of pavement

and staircases with railings where

buoyant boys go to learn new tricks.

I remember when you told me

Lean into it,

Just lean into it,

as though I had never before

surrendered my body to the whims of gravity

and let the greedy beast lure me straight

down a dead-end road. 

We were held together

by bitten, bleeding tongues and

tightly crossed fingers.  Our contorted

figures, bookends bracing the weight

of volumes of history books

each with a slightly different account of

the same tired war.  Not one of them gambling

on who fired first but what’s the initial blow

now that both contenders

have finally crumbled like Hellenic statues,

erected to be revered. 

I still revere your remains.

They have the trappings

of a holy space like stained glass

green eyes that make the chapel captives feel closer

to something they have always wanted

to believe in and it was someone much more

sound than me who suggested that

those who listen for a sound will hear it

just like those who wait for a touch will

feel it

and although I knelt down

in your ornamented chapel there was no

sound, touch or any sense at all to be had by me

in that space — holy or not and

as far as I can tell, prayer

is nothing

but a waiting game for gilded sinners

and those who sleep beside them.