For years she sat in meditation
 Climbing hard
 Across a flat surface
 Getting nowhere slow
 Only to one day find herself
 Sitting on a high plateau of her own making
 A mountain of mantras invisibly compressed

 From that day forward
 She was unable to be anyone 
 Other than who she was

 Like one of those bottom-heavy toys
 That bounces back after being hit
 She continuously spontaneously
 Righted herself
 As life hit her again and again

 Irrevocably integrated
 Irreversibly seamless
 She presented her entire face to the world

 Workartlove came together
 And she breathed prayers wherever she stood.

My mother the volunteer
Washed church linens in our basement
Starched and ironed her beliefs in our kitchen
Folding them into precise thirds
Before carrying them back to church

I followed behind
Falling in love with narrow hall
Tiny closet
Cubby holes, drawers
Intricate checklist

I watched as she counted
The paper-thin wafers
Estimating Sunday's crowd
Taste testing just one
Satisfying herself
That it was still dry
Stuck to her lips

One planned sip of red wine
Then everything was ready
The priestess behind the priest
Her only vestment a cotton frock

Just another goddam hippie
Doing his thing
Along Galilee

Don't try to be him
Don't fixate on his death
Forget all this talk
About good and evil
You'll only end up a prissy fake
A character in your own play
 
Give up trying
To be him
You'll only end up a poor substitute
For yet another holy man

Authentic, that's the key
Be you
The closer you get to you
The closer you get to him

Don't be afraid
It's in there
Waiting
Take forty days and forty nights
Hell, take a lifetime
It's worth it

Spread your own word
Sacrifice for your own beliefs
Then you'll be what holy means

It's Christmas Eve in Fairbanks
And I'm with Dad at the Stroecker house
Mr. Stroecker is in the kitchen
Blasting on his trumpet
I can barely hear the music
Over the clink of glasses
And laughter of big-breasted women
Heavy with scent
And brushing up against men
Who aren't even their husbands

Me in my new red dress
My silky legs sweetly biding their time
 
When suddenly in barges Mom
Bringing the cold
Scratching me with her holly corsage
Hauling me off to church
Where I'm packed wool coat to wool coat
Not allowed to sit
Not allowed to sing
Until Father Warren declares
It's officially Christmas
And twelve months of pent-up emotion
Fills the air
Spills out of the church
Hovers over the frozen river
Follows me home to my bed
 

Like love
It came and went
Arrived unexpectedly
Unearned
Only to disappear 
Leaving the mundane struggle 
The bouncing between pleasure and pain
The desire to just once more
Experience it again

Tantalizing and elusive
Shocking in its sudden joy
Its ability to encompass everything
Good and bad, easy and difficult 
It made everything necessary
Everyone equal
All things part of the same

Encouraged by water and solitude 
It lapped around the edges of lakes
Bubbled up out of hot springs
Rushed down river gorges

An underground well
That could be tapped into with paper and pen
It forced even the strong to their knees
Turning the body
Into a disposable harbor
A temporary cove
That, once shed,
Released its energy
Back into where it all began

You know that lake
That round, ripple-skinned lake
That bowl-bottomed lake
That's lined with grass

Would you meet me there
To shed our personalities at the shore
Along with our skin color
Parents and places of birth

To dip soul naked
Into the deep
And risk coming out
Just human?

Sometimes it feels like failure
To not do anything
If I had more strength
I tell myself
I would have saved you by now

Instead, whole days go by
Without your needing me
Days when we can both rest
In the arms of the world 

She took some comfort
From beaded altar
Sueded parent
Bending over a stained-glass child
 
Gave thanks for 
Raisin-eyed priest
Blood-red carpet
That ran between the pews

But did most of her praying outdoors
Alone
Kneeling pink-cheeked in the snow
Offering her face 
To the falling heavens
Catching real communion wafers
On her outstretched tongue
Carving cold temples
Out of the white stuff
Using nothing more than a kitchen spoon