Lynn Strongin
	Saint Francis On A Dark Day                                 One can tell a bird by its feathers. i. Air dark as an oiled flute a brown wood room with a flame burning St Francis in the library on a sombre day. We put things to our own use: the bruise. He turns on a dais on a ruin-colored noon. Eyes incandescent. Conversation weaving back & forth between him & me like two at a shuttle: The cloth above our shimmering, shivering Saint Vitus-dance bluegray. Does he compose canticles at a right angle to all others? I got married in worsted. Illness often a goad to spirituality The capstone of boyhood- girlhood for me or was I really a boy? My twelfth summer. Icarian, I flew too near the sun & bore a shoulder-scar. Young St Francis in his youth longed for lustre, glory all which he later despised. Both he and I had a dream only possible in the Middle Ages: Sapphires, rubies, caskets, a library in jewel colors, illuminated manuscripts Then the metallic black of crows' wings took light large recurring glance of off-radiance. A lung-clash         frail boy with illness of the lungs a strong girl with affliction of the central nervous system. * Here on earth life is torture. He went toward lepers whose faces were an open sore & kissed them. When I was twelve folk stopped mother to say have her eat off the roots off the ground bathe her in dirty dishwater: that was down south. A Christian Science Practitioner took me under her wing (for bucks.) Said “Today's the day you'll have your demonstration.” Thirteen, an imaginative girl I worked myself into a frenzy focusing on walking again. ii. Today rainy people stopping me wheeling up the glassy pavement “Don't' you want an umbrella? What vivid stockings.”: Flashy as a tart I can stop traffic with them. Struggling down a bank ramp another “friend”? called out, “I have my surgery on the 22nd.” “Good luck” I flung over my shoulder like confetti at a wedding. Only I'd use birdseed. I imagined pale birds fluttering from their prison bars to his hand. Of Assisi he returned clothier's son who stole all the clothing. I steal borrow all the wit I can knowing good poets do not borrow but steal yet arrive home to more crybabies; “My Avon catalogue was stolen.” “I have a splitting headache from the perfume.” Lucky enough to have perfume light bathe a town she is I close the door my wheels & gloves dripping like wet feathers to the bath. Tears. iii. The story is no childish fable but appeals to the simple. John of Gaunt's mistress' was Kathryn Swynford. Redhaired largbeasted Francis' passion was the lord after a cocky boyhood in which his charms, midsize were winning but his eyes were incendiary. As for me, I too harbored an unearthly joy. Do I truly believe I am Emily reincarnated? Garbed in puritan gray? Yes. Most days. But how can I say a word about what's holy without tainting it? I love those who read me yet still are hungry. I would not turn a page quickly nor turn a wren away              St Francis              St Francis              (did I not pray during treatments on plinths              being ambulanced from hospital to hospital              on a gurney              like lighting              candle after candle              heart-surgery after heart-surgery?) Time for a nap: lie on a scaffold like Michelangelo under the ceiling.                             In this single dark room with a flame burning                             library with speckled books like fawns                             on a dark day-Be with me.