Sometimes they left me for the day
while they went — what does it matter
where — away. I sat and watched her work
the dough, then turn the white shape
yellow in a buttered bowl.
A coleus, wrong to my eye because its leaves
were red, was rooting on the sill
in a glass filled with water and azure
marbles. I loved to see the sun
pass through the blue.
"You know," she'd say, turning
her straight and handsome back to me,
"that the body is the temple
of the Holy Ghost."
The Holy Ghost, the oh, oh ... the uh
oh, I thought, studying the toe of my new shoe,
and glad she wasn't looking at me.
Soon I'd be back in school. No more mornings
at Grandma's side while she swept the walk
or shook the dust mop by the neck.
If she loved me why did she say that
two women would be grinding at the mill,
that God would come out of the clouds
when they were least expecting him,
choose one to be with him in heaven
and leave the other there alone?