Eccentric Votive Offering

Have psalter and breviary. Have hymnbook. Have laid

fingers on rosary strings, plucked

like lyres their clatterwood. Coughed incense. Adored

precisely as instructed. Stood Passiontide vigil, then sexted

at noon. Cast bone die to prophesy

dyings, told

beads their more sorrowful mysteries. Rehallowed

insomnia to Compline then Matins,

August sky vested in purple surplice. Had

ears to hear stern sermons, and so sang-

back-against utter depravity, anti-antiphonal. Droned undersong’s

cacophony during Evensong.

Left breadcrumb trails

through wine chalices. Deified,

defiled: sprayed

holy water from the bristles of an aspergillum

as if flailing a scourge. Reconsecrated

curse tablets to ever more

jealous gods. Desooted

candlesnuffer’s silver, chanted

Exorcism Rites at my self: Begone,

begone, begone, and all

thy fell companions. Told

What-Cannot-Not-Be

not to be. Laid

votive amulets like this

one on little-seen altars, into bog-slurp, waited

centuries for their resurfacing

and interpreting,

archaic, ill-

understandable and still

resurrectant, mnemonic, delivered

out of and back in to oblivion.