New Poems Page

The Nuns' Chair

Even convents have garage sales when suddenly
property values soar, the sisters too few
to matter, too old to carry on alone, consigned
into the broken hands of Christ Himself
One of their chairs now sits in my front room
a wide cosy golden squatter upon which
I imagine a nun or two farted or blenched
or worried—easy to fret in such comfort
beads rippling through freckled hands and
eyes flickering, sinking at times with doubt
What has held an anchorite now holds a man’s
hoary, hairy weight previously foreign here
him who grasps how dust in the brocade
has the same name wherever it arises or settles