I slapped the switch off
And white noise came on again.
Like silence, plush air conditioning
Occupied the church corridors.
My hands were warmed by sunlight
Through dusty windows and friction
As I pulled the vacuum cord in tight loops.

Dusting the pews was awkward exercise
As the seats pressed constantly
the back of one knee
And the quiet led me
To thinking about my father
Who's work I was performing.

He would pay me nothing for these hours
Of consideration, of bending over
God's toilets and God's carpets.
I carried God's trash in my arms,
And a house to learn in was compensation.
Meals at my father's table were lessons
like smoking a dark cigar in one session.

I would startle him awake sometimes in the pews,
And I felt the cause by myself
Below the alter and the cross,
Pushing the dry mop through the heavy air,
And crossing the intermittent warmth of windows,
The presence of silence left my ears ringing,
As if every voice that had moved the air with truth
Remained here, as if someone entering
Would lose the power to hear a distinct phrase.

The warmth of helplessness
Would fall on his working hands,
And the sweaty friction through his calluses
Would force him to set aside the black cord.
The ache in his knees would bend them
Into their rest.
Then the unforgiving wood back
Would bend his bones
To forget their work of support,
To settle against the cushioned seat
While the monstrous weight of security
Pinioned his uneasy thoughts in sleep.

Father, forgive me.
I know they weren't your toilets,
And the smell of refuse is yours
No more than the overwhelming voices.
The presence in the silence
That set you to sleeping is an inheritance
That aches in my ribs
And makes my wife cry.
Oh God, fill me too with the gentle warmth.
Let it fall against my skin
And through the dusty black windows of my eyes
Until the truth about my father
Is a memory I can hear.

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