The Gay Catholic Priest gets on his knees in the meadow in the violets not because
he’s ashamed in the violets in the toadstools in the puddles in the mud but
because hiding how his wrist pivots heightens the swell
in the deer droppings in the spiderwebs between the grass blades in
the vibrations through the tiny strings in the pearl dew
summer purchased in Echo’s desperation to be heard before diminishing
in the hydrangeas in the lilies in the fall of lemon pollen in the hunger of the rosewood beads
The Gay Catholic Priest’s mother laid upon him when she knew
he knew she knew in their basement in the summer he turned seventeen
in the memories of Michael helping him haul photo albums from rising
river water in pale wet hands in wet gentle hands in wrinkled hands wet with skimming hands
touching against the humid outer wall where vines of wisteria
trailed low and tickled them in dog pants around their ankles in God The
Sunburst through the trees in the gnats that never bothered them in the water
that kept flowing into every depression in the dark animal heart in the center
prayer of what could have been in what used to be easy
in nuns with rulers lifted in yellow jackets hovering over his left hand in warning
in leaving The Gay Catholic Priest to pleasure
with his left hand’s mirror in the mistaken privacy of held-breath air. 

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