(for Peter Burnell, 1945-2012, who gave me, years ago, my first copy of Aquinas and who was most likely the closest that's ever come to my spiritual hero, John Henry Newman. I saw it in him, however young & brief)
__________
His secretum meum mihi
(from 1979 to 1985)
could've been apportioned easily to me who've seen Spirit
descend on the lake, when it was hegelian
or tried to impress friends (some friends!) who'd smoked and
let youth turn flabby, past all seriousness
Hid in the eye or elegant smile of the saintly (as if I'd know!)
must be at least geese that conform
(as everything'd done I thought by now) to a stinking bit of flat
shale rocks of a world or a child
curious for stars in the sand .The lake as Spirit bodying forth un-
earthed algae pools, to the child-like
that I had seen as doubtful and adamic because I was sick with the
hope of seeing deep. There was no
Henry around, you see, to catholicize and crew it about the quads
and rooms of my schools, not for me
nor a lounging fellowship-style of smart inquiry that ever worked
for the used books studies
of the blue-collar catechumen who'd been always marked by red-
faced embarrassment, afraid of girls
so that purity & eye strain were my primary Notes set in uncial,
my only true writing to God
