Some holy family secrets

(for LP, again)

-catholicity-

From car lot and horizon, with the odd staid child in arm

and straight to the musty blinds of a second home

was how it always began--

the cute pouty girl I saw in her mom's Spring hems, that is,

whose classroom came with mirror and pitch pipe,

who'd sensed, of all things , the diamond halls were haunted--

yes, and to prove it had found no shoot of light anywhere

in the church's nave when her kids had to file past a dead priest,

right after recess, and even say some stations

"The church can't be both a tomb and comfy choir, can it?"

she'd said later; "ha, we're all living in a bubble",

and even, I replied, the red-knuckled kids we met on our way out

(in some glassy-eyed rage!) racing down two floors

By now the fresh teacher bloom had faded, Sears bag in her hand,

heels clicking through concrete doors