Arms a Cross

                    for Padre Mario Prada

When you pray, eyes open, your words
are pearls, but your arms a cross.
No one but the worldly hang there now.
The sacrifices of eternity wear thin.
You lift your arms like wings
and that way you are saved for this world.

Nothing around your neck but the scars of age,
Mario, the sacrament is always a little further on.
waiting, as though a sacrament were the body
of He whose callused nail-borne hands
reach out and you take them in your own.

In Colombia you were not far from the father
of not only words but the shapes of stories.
Now he's gone, I never look back
for him or he for me.
Arms a cross, hands stretched, fingers spines
of flight. Let me go, Lord, I have much to do.
Will there be time?

11-22 June 2014

copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander