Jesus

"What is it with the cross? You believe in Jesus, dad?"
"What?"
"Are you still a Jew?"
He turns away.
"Dammit, it's not a religion, verstehst?"
         Brings fist down on the altar.
"We seek the perfection of metals," he says,
         re-lighting stove,
                   "salvation by smelting."

"But what's the point?" I ask.

"The point? Internal alchemy, shmegegge. Rosa mystica," he shouts.
Meat into spirit, darkness into light."

Seated now, seated on bar stools.
Flickering candle in a windowless room.
Visible and invisible. Face of my father
         in the other world.
I see him, see him in me
my rosy cross
                     podiatrist father.
"I'm making no secret of this secret," he says,
turning to the altar.
"Tell me, tell me how to pray."
"Burst," he says, "burst like a star."

          -Robert Sward




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