The Making Of Saints

Here in this shagged house where candles are not allowed
I am the unstruck match itching to spark
A hymn of invisible light. I trace a path to the altar
Of their memory below the 50-inch flatscreen.
No wax statues here, but icons all the same in photo frames of
Annie, who toiled in backs of classrooms, and Duke
The fireman, hence the candle ban. Heated up potatoes
In a tin-can oven and slept in twin rooms a wall apart
For 63 years before leaking up to heaven like blown-out wick.
Their routines lie imprinted on the wobbly armchair anchoring the tabernacle,
The icebox preserved by basement murk, in the sacristy of the back
Bedroom where she died. Cathedral chimes from a wall clock
Let us know now when to take lunch, a plate of heated up doughy pizza,
And when to pause for the unspoken intentions in our hearts.
It’s all hagiography, patchwork from another century
Before every wall housed an outlet for charging
The phone I pocket before I exit from the side door,
Genuflecting to double-knot a lace, as Duke instructed
And leaving no bulb hot, as Annie commands.