Gail Nielsen
Young Augustines
One night
on the top of the world
I finally heard
the story of your conversion
Who converts to Catholicism these days
I said to you,
more than asked
years back
—except you and my father
and capital L Liars who want to do nice Catholic girls
the especially brazen ones
kill two birds,
use the faith
to ask forgiveness
On the top of high hills, low clouds come
and set history down upon the earth
“I came to see I was forgiven
and Christ met all my needs”
no surprise to me
my father lost his own father early in life too
such is the legacy
we corner God the Father in, next to mother
and He saves
the day again, filling in
that last archetypal empty chair
at the supper table
for me as a daughter too,
only I thought neither of mine ever loved me
so I went on sensual and spiritual benders
You told me to write down my explanation
and send it to you:
deep calls to deep,
we latch to what’s inside those stained
glass windows to the soul
and compensate ourselves a vast arc
soldered by an earnest desire for good,
from some forgiving deed
somewhere
in the messes of our histories
or grace
until we land far enough away from the pain
and, if we’ve made ourselves true enough,
He awakens in us there
the Real Christ
everything else like salt
dissolved
I never did hit send.
All this time I’ve been trying to put my heart on it,
this deeper quality I sense in you
I resist with all my might at the same time
when your voice tempers the truth
where your calculations cut me off
how you tell us to “stay tuned”
you’ve shared with me your secret
manipulations
so I’m in the know, yet pushed out
onto your cold portico again
Where’d you fashion all this?
I’ve wondered since I met you.
You should have seen me before that.
I was worse than Augustine.
Ah, so it is.
That’s young Augustine there in your eyes
only to meet mine briefly on purpose
How deep the river then and how many
say, did she bear you a child?
—really, I want to know,
this RC girl can take it
what happened next
Time flies when it knows who’s waiting for it.
Since we met atop the world
the rest of me has descended to meet us too.
My confession now—
I have discovered that it is my reflection
my own mendicant past life
in your eyes
I can’t get hold of,
not yours
In the Name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit
Someday I’ll touch my hands to your shoulders
and let you and your legend be lifted
into these summit mists
love gratis
if you are indeed a dear brother, ego sum rumex
In the meantime I can’t forget
how I wish I could have told you
(but the vultures of time kept circling us up there)
no older than Mary,
a young Augustine and I once
conceived
and he made sure
the child never walked the earth
and was lost in ancient history, the memory
locked only to his past like the fire-thief to the rock
We have more than you know for each other.
So in brief moments
when you do glance up
I catch the once ravenous me
wild and pleasured
still trying to hide a friar’s shame
and when we get caught up in conversation
like we did that night
and need clarification
or for daring extended looks
a second or two
longer—
forgive me
for I’ve been running from the memory
of lust-turned-love turned inside out
breathless without
stopping my whole life
and I did not expect to meet us all
behind your fourth-century eyes
