Sacrament

On a Sunday,
At two in the afternoon,
With the world cast cold and blue
Under an east wind bleaching
The farm fields and the unlovely lawns
With the thin silt of snow
Fallen swirling from an Alberta cyclone,

With the city warm
In electric contemplations,
Numb with the glowing phosphors
That flicker the latest game scores
Across faces drowsed by church sermons,
Full with dinners served rich and buttery
In the private homes,
In table-clothed, silvered
Restaurants,
In the potluck meeting halls
That steam the air and waft
Meaty smells incense-like
Past noses,
Insatiable.

With last night’s
Scene serene in my memory
Wine still soaking my brain
My eyes lead-lined,
Sitting here beside the polyforms
And paper waste of McDonald’s,
The unstaid sounds
Of packaged food transacting
Across stainless steel counters
The workers framed and uniformed
In brick red,
With my world hyperbolic
In its depth and width and frame,
The future calling like the bells
Of some temple
Worship and sacrifice,
I will not pray.


—Eric Nelson