in your heavy…

In Your Heavy Robe
—for Richard Wyatt

How they lionized his death,
St. Vincent de Paul’s,
peerless bird

who flew through gates
forbidden to the merely rich. How the earth
wailed up, faces clouded

and wept when death diminished
their champion, swirling
to sacrosanct. Love

refined to flying colors soared
to where the dead
glitter and float

in celestial gowns.
Is it simply luck that makes the dead
so fine? No,

it’s deliver us from evil
and thine becomes mine, if only
second-hand. Everyone sins

but the poor sin badly—
the poor sin more easily forgiven.
You tried to kiss a saint

on the mouth! How alone
you must feel, your heavy robe gathering
madness like a storm.