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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Coming Back to the Stone

I must come back
and kiss the stone,
the sentinel above your single grave.
Brother and sister
who died together.
Do you come here now,
to play among the other children
in the perpetual summer
of St. Augustine?
Did you grow up in Heaven
and live out your childhoods?
Are you man and woman now
going about the business
of your spirits?

When I found you with Mary,
tourists from Ohio,
did you hear me later
when the bus stopped at the
gate of the Shrine of Our Lady of LaLeche,
when a woman yanked a crying boy
from his seat to view the holy place,
and I was pulled by three intentions.
To remain with my family on the bus,
to return to the grave,
to help the child.

I thrust a sucker in the woman’s hand
to comfort the boy.
I realized later the kiss
I wanted to place on your stone
was the sucker.
That the tired boy was
the weariness of the world.
Was this scenario designed by Providence?

Our bus went on.
I worried about the boy.
I was numb when I looked
at the great cross given by the Pope
to commemorate the first Mass
said in the New World.
I knew however whatever belief
I have,
its intention is loving,
so the world is wonderful
in wonderful ways,
and all is well,
my prayers for the children,
and looking at spring happen
in Ohio.

Published inIndex of all Poems