/ part one / first communion /
I stand at the door
to the double-wide.
I've come to bear witness,
to taste and see
holy sacraments:
I've come for my first communion,
a drop biscuit,
slathered with butter
and heaped until heavy
with Welch's grape jelly.
Long before I was baptized by water,
I was sprinkled with the miracle
of the farmer's wheat
turned to flour,
in this, the first sacred place I loved:
my grandmother's kitchen.
I've come to watch her turn a harvest into biscuits.
Not from the sidelines–
no, she holds me and sings like Miriam
even though it's Elvis Presley
who answers her on the radio.
She holds me close,
and she tells me who I am.
Her hands over mine,
we crack an egg,
laugh as we move,
awkward, out-of-sync
like she's the star of the show
who just took me,
the kid with two left feet,
right to the middle of the dance floor.
She spins and twirls me
onward to the waiting well
of all-purposed grains,
shattered then sifted then shaped.
Deep magic hovers like a cloud,
like air on a sultry summer day before a storm.
Some shared inheritance
tingles on my fingertips,
something eternal–
like I might have met God, here
in my grandmother's shining face.
I remember her not minding the mess,
not minding the time lost,
not minding anything at all.
I remember knowing,
without being told
she delighted in me,
and I delighted in her.
