Here Is the Church

They had never spoken

to me before, save one, once, when a basketball jammed

its knuckle and for three days straight that finger

shouted and wept,

wept and shouted,

fat and purple, full of anger. This night

was different. I heard a tiny song from

deep inside the neat, white bones, unlike any melody I knew

and not unpleasant. The body had not sung

to me like this. The notes broke small and tidy, no thick

organ keening yellow, no mushrooms

sprouting

in the soft dark of the brain. No one dies

of stiff fingers in the morning, but

the body had begun its journey, whistled

under the house. Trays of brown

cigarettes, unhappy

nights, the love that could not take; these would not now

forgotten until the night of singing finger bones; a chorus

softer than geese, the officiant indicating

All rise, please.