• The Great High Priest


    Sometimes my grandmother, when she was too busy herself,
    would petition me to go before the great High Priest.
    My stomach always flipped and churned at the prospect.
    But still I stepped alone into his temple,
    shadows moving over my face,
    and raised my eyes to the great High Priest.

    I hear him still, keeping up his chant,
    a steady staccato of coughs proclaiming his devotion.
    Beside him on the table lie the relics of his religion:
    a glass of water holding plastic teeth,
    a silver ashtray brimming over.
    In his lap he holds a crossword puzzle only half-finished,
    his sacred text.
    Ashy clouds of incense issue from his mouth,
    and I sneeze.
    His eyes never move from the otherwordly glow of his altar.
    In the corner of the room, high on a pedestal,
    he watches the holy rituals flicker across the screen:
    men moving back and forth around a diamond painted in white,
    intent always on completing one more circuit.
    They show great devotion to the religion.

    I, an unworthy supplicant,
    can do no more than stutter out my prayer
    and petition the priest in breathless half-whispers
    to bestow on me a gift of eggs or milk.
    My prayers are tiny, unworthy,
    but when you are the great High Priest,
    you can see through to the righteous heart.
    He absolves my sins in a few words,
    slow and unhurried:
    "W e e e e l l l l . . .
    Alright, sis."
    Then he rises from his seat in the shadowy temple,
    takes slow steps towards the exit,
    and disappears to grant my wish
    in a glow of golden light
    as he opens the screen door.

    Years after the priest had departed
    and his temple grown thick with dust,
    I came to see him one last time.
    Enshrined as he was in his coffin,
    face more healthy and aglow than I'd ever seen in life,
    he looked out of place outside his temple.
    I stared at his waxy smile,
    unsure of what to feel.
    "Maybe,"
    I wanted to tell him,
    "We could have been closer.
    If only it weren't for
    a difference in religion."