Father

Today is the Memorial of St. Denis, Martyr and Bishop of Paris and patron saint of our own Fr. Denis, OSB, here at Saint Meinrad. Last semester, Fr. Denis' lecture in our Sacrament of Marriage Class (on George Eliot's novel Middlemarch) inspired me to revise a poem I had written on the Priesthood. I share this poem in his honor.

Father
for the Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

This must be my heaven:
cold bed of a lenten life,
heated leftovers from another man’s feast,
cold shower on a winter morning.

(Hell’s next door: the empty church
parking lot littered by teenagers’
beer cans on New Year’s eve.)

This eden’s rein is the white band
around my neck, the noose of a pluperfect life.
With it I wear my blacks—not to mourn
lost loves but—to savor God’s spoils:
sexless nights, wifeless days, childless years.

Here I found my advent joy:
on a nameless night, beside her numbered
hospital bed, a dying penitent clings to my hand
and whispers in her final breath my borrowed name:
Father.

12.iii.2006