I dream about the old church
Gone since the late-eighties,
The cost of demolition
Doubled because of asbestos
Ghosts that lived there swept clear
Filled in by bulldozer blades
Cemetery expanded
Death moving in slow rectangles
Rowing clean and straight
A green place I could walk and
Every name a face I knew
The way I know who sat in
What row what women wore hats
I see them walking up front
To receive Holy Communion
The ushers counting them off
In twelves like the apostles
How they stood humbly their hands
Held in the way they were taught
To hold the holy shot glass
To dissolve the tasteless wafer
On their already dry tongues.
I dream of it lately not
The horror of all churches
Their sleepy meanness coiling
As the moon forgets to kill
The night wolves and their curses,
The way the goose walks over
My grave.
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