Susan Chute

 

You came down from the heavens.
The high angel adores you and still,
you feel like a poor wretch.
—Rumi 

 

Don’t believe in Jesus or any of that crap but you
and you and you (you know who you are) you came
into my life and salvation rolled down
 like song, like blue jeans, like spilled custard warm from
grandma’s oven as I spooned while she recited the
plotline of how her sin would blacklist her from the heavens.
She’s a you and Helen Louise, and Adrienne and Patricia, the
matriarchs, muses, masters, the you’s that help happen the high
wire act of waking each morning, each angel
alive and dead who raises me, all the adores
you open in me, I thank you, I praise you,
I can’t climb the path to your sainthood and
it’s been years, this pilgrimage, I’m guilty still,
you took my cross and I could not tell you,
orchids that blossom in my neglect, the feel
of your silk on my sandpaper, you deities, saving me like
Barack breaking Amazing Grace at a
funeral, like sin lifted, you my transformation, my revelation, my poor
sins forgiven, my transubstantiation from wretch.