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cut my grass.

      Sagrada Familia

      You could see the Mediterranean

      from the towers, the colored fruit,

      the script; stained glass on fire inside, high

      boles on pillar trees, all the creation,

      elevation, cool space prayer could use.

      Gaudi was in town too, where his angels

      got fined for his every over-the-top attempt

      to amend the human condition.

      (“We need more sidewalk here.”)

      But it’s always mercy, the people, isn’t it,

      who finally make a trip? The guy

      who tried French to direct lost us, our

      first night in Barcelona; he left, only

      to come back, help us find our hostel.

      Picasso and Dali showed,

      but it was the other Gothic Cathedral

      that spoke to Linda and me: an organist,

      as if on cue, up high and to the left

      beginning her Bach as we came in—

      a trumpeter, my delight, soon joining in.

      And the people in Gaming:

      the philosopher and historian hoisting tankards,

      all the families, inviting us over for dinner.

      (Professor Cassidy, in kilt, leaving

      that semester, calling us “the dear Craigs.”)

      And St. Joseph himself: the grounds man,

      Maros—his family, his own Downs’ son;

      priests too, Fr. Matthew, on the bus,

      making amends for leaving us behind

      in his mad rush for Mercy’s Polish shrine.

      Campus children came over to sing

      my shy daughter happy birthday.

      St. Francis breathed Assisi, sure;

      Anthony, delivering his delightfully

      third-world Padua; St. Paul, inside-his-walls.

      (And in Rome, when I had to pull my Down’s guy,

      stuck, through a moving metro door.)

      Europe was, is, thankfully, not America.

      It breathes a different air, less cowboy waste,

      more concern for the little things, for the fact

      that they are all in this together.

      Post-colonialist tact perhaps. I didn’t belong,

      but liked the fact that they seemed to.

      There’s no denying it: Austrians

      kill their babies, too, but they so obviously

      pay for it. You can see that in how kind

      and isolated they are.

      Who will ever save us from ourselves?

      And when will He come?

      The Vatican

      They hadn’t time to sort the modern—

      our Jesuit guide called it “mom’s fridge.”

      (Besides, there was the matter of donations.)

      I wanted to idiot time,

      go back to the Renaissance tripe,

      him noting that the painter had revised

      900 times. “How many people

      would do that today?”

      By the time we got to the Sistine: ceiling,

      walls of Marvel—comics, Thor and Captain

      America’s abs, I had to tell him:

      they needed to get down there,

      make some calls.

      The best do not deserve the rest.

      This was the Vatican for God’s sake.

      *

      It was funny; though large, the whole place

      stuck me as homey, small in some way:

      too many statues—even the huge courtyard

      out front, which had always seemed

      like all of history on tv. The stones there

      felt gathered from backyards everywhere,

      the whole show put together on the fly.

      “We don’t have much money here,”

      our young cleric said; and oddly enough,

      that felt about right.

      *

      My son pointed out Cesena’s donkey ears,

      Michelangelo’s droop: sheet of skin,

      not smiling, hanging down—a four-year

      penance from Julius II.

      “Okay,” I had to admit.

      “He may have revised.”

      I use a tiny bowl for cereal

      so I don’t eat too much,

      but then I have a second helping.

      This happens—so it must be metaphor:

      a human being, tying to lose what won’t leave,

      trying to catch what he can’t.

      Either is on point, and both better

      than the alternative, which is what happens

      when one becomes—how else to put it—

      contemporary?

      Do they hide underneath my table

      when forgotten: metaphors, I mean?

      Do they finally make peace with the Easter Bunny,

      the length of childhood? I like to think of them

      under there with the dog, at the ready,

      to play if all else fails. Or if else does not.

      They are the bulbs on my Christmas tree,

      make-up on a beautiful woman.

      They are every day you’re not here!

      But even if you were, that would only

      be for a time, wouldn’t it? And then

      the mundane takes over again, with all its

      little jobs and goings. And that’s okay,

      at least until I wake again, early,

      listen to the heavenly shuffle.

      I need to prepare a place for you, just in case

      you arrive, and for me as well—

      the one I’m happiest with.

      Of course most of my days are spent

      on family, making this cushion set right

      for Sally, putting that train back on track

      for Bill, watching the whole scene

      with

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