Palm Sunday
              for Lynn Doiron
Holy water is changed on the Saturday before Easter, before Sunday when the church is filled with newcomers, relatives and strays who have memories of religion as a respite of sorts from the industry of landing one’s life into that final port. Father Steve began his homily with a list as if he were a head chef, a building superintendent. He explained having to cut down two trees for the scaffolding the workmen needed to repair the fascia along the upper roof. The fidgeting grew as a baby cried.

I was absorbed by the hair of a young girl in the row in front of me. She sat slightly to my right so I could glimpse the profile of her face, her expressions came and went as the light warmed, then cooled with the passing clouds. She seemed to look at Father Steve, then past him, to the alter, the tabernacle. She looked well beyond the focal point of her eyes as they stilled and gleamed with the flicker of an unattended coal. We sat beneath the stare from the images of saints framed to the wall above the windows.

She smiled at a little boy in front of her playing with a frond his father had folded into a cross. Her face shifted to project a sense of nurture she suddenly felt as if aware of her own ability to parent, to guide another away from the traps her scars had begun to show. The furrow deepened in her brow; she held it through the Psalm being sung as we sat with our hands in our laps.

If the hum in her head is anything like mine, it includes the sense that our bodies are waiting a signal to continue to become, to preserve the look we wish to frame for a wall or a dresser. An airplane overhead pushes on.

maybe 'waiting for a signal'
or 'awaiting a signal'

other than that tiny bump -- i so very, very much enjoyed this.

ld

I enjoy how the paragraphs wander through the thoughts of the N.  Very nice reading.

Thanks SL and Lavonne, probably need to work the poem lurking in this. Some day.

Love how you combine stillness and motion.  In the close, how the hum in the head resonates with the unstated drone of an airplane; and how the framed future is both something to become and also so already become.  (I know that reads as nonsensical, but I know what I mean -- just not how to say it.)

very good imagery here, and you definitely know what you're writing about.
espacially loved the last stanza.  great read.