All Good Eagle Scouts

The church was dusty smelling and old,
like worn, wool trousers with tobacco in the pockets
or tweed jackets worn by fat men
who smoked rolled pipe trimmings and sipped wine
though their livers cried for seltzer.

We sat, you and I,
holding hands lightly
our perspiration blending
upon your cotton dress,
teal and paisley
your marble legs tempting,
freshly shaven, buttermilk.

A Book of Common Prayer lay face down
flipped to Form IV,
a hymnal bound in blue velvet
by your side.
The priest, in his cornflower vestments,
beamed from the high pulpit
and I sat,
my blue eyes fixed on his aura.

You squeezed my hand and I looked over at you,
your strawberry hair traced in silver
framing a blue and ruby gaze,
riches beyond measure.
Your glance all cool breezes and
Wordsworth daffodils.

The sermon was forthright and substantial,
a stray obscenity
thrown in for seasoning.
The salt of the earth knelt afterwards, uncomfortably
on hard wood and merlot upholstery
bookish, bearded, worn
gentlemen and ladies of the world.

We filed out and down to receive the sacrament,
my smooth, manicured hands
clasped behind my back reverently
like all good Eagle Scouts.

I knelt between you and a graybeard,
his wool coat brushing against my worsted,
my knees sharp with the pain of post middle age,
a little suffering in service.

The curate passed with the body
and I accepted it within my cupped, moist hands.
The priest
thin, mustached, and ivory
cast his gentle eyes upon me,
offering absolution.

I thought briefly
of the women and children in foreign lands I'd slain,
of the resources and bodies plundered,
burnt in the wake of men like me
upon the altar of Smith's Invisible Hand.
Christs on nameless crosses.

A shade passed before my face
and I hesitated before consuming the bread.
Landsdale,
Diem's tireless smoke,
fifteen years in a Saigon no more,
Quang Tri Province,
a small girl in white
clasping the hand of her disemboweled grandmother,
the jungle,
Siahanouk's wide smile,
sampans bursting with opium
and blood money,
guilt, numbness, whiskey and valium by the bedside,
innumerable dossiers,
black spots from the Rand,
the smooth worn butt
of a Springfield bolt action against my cheek,
my gritted teeth in a malaria ward,
damp, hot,
and the dead.

I grew dizzy as I tried to stand
and I felt myself age,
my wind turning to ash.
I grasped the twin sheets of metal beneath my Oxford.
I felt my eyes turn wild
and then recompose.
My heart fluttered momentarily
as I rejoined you
in our pew near the back.
You looked at me in an all too knowing way and whispered, “again?”
“No” I lied.

The visions cooled
as we knelt for the benediction.
A distant jet boomed through the firmament,
and the bells rang twelve
in a free land
teeming with cattle,
lowing amid the gravestones.