5 February, 2025
Sometimes Sainthood Never Comes
To her question about childhood, he shrugged.
Couldn’t figure out how to say it.
As a boy, he had tried the choir and quit.
Served at the altar for a single summer and fall.
Once, he pilfered church wine and rubbed it
across a small wound to feel for Jesus.
He had studied the Stations of the Cross.
It could be done, he thought.
The carrying, the nailing, the bystanding,
the enduring, the imploring,
believing
in what can be felt but not seen.
All around, it didn’t seem that hard.
At least not impossible.
But the church pushed harder than it pulled,
while the world told other stories.
And now they were traveling for the summer,
eating breakfast outside the tent
they had pitched in a field by the Deschutes River.