From "Lord's Prayer"
My father taught it the old-fashioned way,
alien and ornate as a wafer on the tongue.
Thine for your, art for are -
new words for words I knew
at three years old.
I don't remember
what I meant when I asked God
to deliver me, to forgive things
I didn't know I'd someday do.
Trespass, Dad explained, was sin:
going where you didn't belong,
off the narrow path of goodness
into the glittery forest.
He made no mention
of the sin not
mortal or venial
but liminal, embedded
in you the way life is,
a simple thing decanted
deep inside the bone.
