Poetry Friday: Recollection

This poem is about my old parish church in New York, the Shrine of Saint Frances Cabrini, which is housed in the same building as a girls' high school founded by the saint and still run by her order, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. The saint's body is preserved in a glass coffin beneath the altar.  The poem is excerpted from "Cycle for Mother Cabrini."

I found your bones that lay
Of the highschool hallway
And drummed them with my need;
They rang and rose and hurried

Me.  I bought and set
Your picture in my wallet
And chose a cheap ring,
A piece of junk but something

Your sisters sell; to me
Its feel and pull heavy
On my fingerbone wore
In for a time, the terror

Of your delicate flesh, the scant
Weight within the fragrant
Bones that it seemed turned
To me as to the bright and the unburned.

-- John Logan

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