A Poem: Verum Corpus

There is no greater awkward joy

Than to celebrate communion one-handed,

Clasping a child in your other arm.

Feeling its small, warm body

Conform itself to your curves; feeling yourself

Move that one side of your body

Into the universal jig that all flesh

Doesn’t know it knows 

Until a baby is put into its arms.

One hand splayed against the soft heaviness of head and neck,

The other outstretched in prayer -

You make God real 

in flesh and blood, 

bread and wine -

Tangible, fragile, consumable.

(One small corner of your mind concerned to do this with all possible dignity

To placate those who may feel the baby detracts

From the seriousness of the occasion –

Another, wondering if dry-cleaning would remove

Baby sick from the shoulder of the antique chasuble,

Should need arise)

In that moment, you are both the baby and God.

Feeling all God’s fierce and tender protectiveness

As these tiny, fragile things are held in your hands –

Feeling all the infant’s fierce and needy grasping

To be held, protected, loved.

Clasping a miniature fistful of chasuble

Against being dropped.

Offering a mere handful of bread,

Against being alone.

Afterwards, I know, I will hear

Both complaints and sentimentality.

But this moment is neither sentimental nor profane.

If I had a spare hand, I would take off my shoes.

For here God is speaking ‘I AM’ into my very body.