OK.
One other poem-- I'm working on this new book
is called The Music at Home.
And this very, very long prosy poems
as in the karate poem and the other ones
I've read so they take a long time like this one.
This is called "Some Mysteries."
This is the-- you know the one I was referring to
about the ringer washer arm.
"I was pretty holy by third grade.
Mother could see that and can see
that I had given up stealing butt-faced plums
and walking with Pepsi cans smashed onto my shoes.
And Sundays she gave me a quarter
for the wicker basket, smoothed my hair with water
and let me go.
I sat in the front pew among old Italian women hunched together
like pigeons, happy because it was only a matter of time
before Monsignor would say we are sinners then
glint his glasses at me.
I would look at his shoes and nod my head yes.
I recalled my sins years before I tossed a hairbrush
into my sister's panties.
It was a game in our bedroom, doctor, doctor.
And the hairbrush was about the only thing
that resembled a doctor's tool.
I opened her panties and said this should help.
Buzzzz.
[LAUGHTER]
And just then mother came in with her apron of chickens
and said Alex is having a party.
Alex, the boy whose hand traveled both ways
in the ringer washer.
The sister and I were scared because we thought mother saw.
She didn't.
She wrung her hands into the apron said wash your faces.
I went first to the bathroom and hurt myself with a hot water.
The handles of the faucets were confusing.
I couldn't see sister.
For a moment I had ruined my eyesight.
I saw the brush wagging and her panties
as mother prodded us to the car.
Sometime between our house and Alex's house,
between childhood and her older years,
she got the brush out, that and a lot more.
In church I would remember my sins
and smiled and feel bad for remembering
such things in church.
I would take communion and feel truly bad.
And when mass was over, stand outside looking at the church
before I started home.
I like to walk home, and like when
I passed the rectory, behind a thorny wall,
thumping sounds like a soccer ball which made me wonder what
our nuns did on the weekends.
[LAUGHTER]
I would listen for a while then leave
thinking that maybe this was what
mystery was, that you hear a thump
and have to guess at what it is.
I guessed a soccer ball and saw Sister Marie running around
the yard with Monsignor's hands pressed together
in prayer, his eyes like the floating eyes of saints
on the church ceiling.
I had a lot of ideas back then and liked to walk around.
The thump was mystery, a ball against the wall.
And aftermath, after the host cleaned you up,
a scoreless game."