Go Upstairs

The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

"The Song of Wandering Angus" by William Butler Yeats

As a child I wanted to go to the Catholic School,
Saint John and Paul's on my street, only 5 houses away!
They wore uniforms and had a basketball hoop
in the parking lot that I used by myself on Sunday afternoons
when nobody was around.
At 13 I started copying religious paintings into my sketchbook.
My parents laughed at me.
I fell in love with old timey spirituals - "I saw the light."
I became obsessed with ex votos
and collected saint candles.

After decades of being a vegetarian
I started clipping pictures of meat from supermarket circulars.
I finally met a butcher who made it all okay
to bake meatloaf and eat a roast and make home-made sausages.

Now I cook in the church down the street for the soup kitchen,
with my butcher's donated meat.
Perhaps I will start learning the stories of the martyrs
and listen to the bilingual sermons
and gaze at the saints
on the stained glass windows upstairs.