The Parvis Bees
Christopher Moya
The pied ecclesia leaves the pew
In supplication: pandemic piety
Of tender lives in faith transfigured,
Stepping carefully toward a palmary place
At the shore of oaken rail,
In nourishment, beseeching,
Eyes closed, heads lowered,
The choral paean soaring overhead,
Gentle arms outstretched,
Hands toward Heaven.
The plaid peignoirs begird the chancel;
Pressed slacks of lumbering men
Crease and join them,
The ladies' smooth knees peeking under hems,
Men's shoulders sunk like resting jets.
The parson's raiment is emblematic hues
That wash before them,
Pardoning their silent orisons
And cutting the stain of morning light
Shot through loud glassworks,
As the gold disk is rationed,
And ah the chalice dips
Like oxeye in the sunny parvis.
Under vaulting eaves,
They hoard new pollen,
Which, beyond the parish doors,
In spruce shadows and elm shades, is scattered--
Alms of rice over wet paddies,
Porous and yielding.
Till, churlish and spent,
On a breeze that fills the width of wings,
Making the silent hedges speak, they return,
Graze at the nectary of heart's unfolding,
And dream of peppered stigma
And the gently twisting flora: charity; renewal;
And as a frail, added mystery,
Delight--
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