Holy Unction
February 1996 

                    I



"Give me oil in my lamp,


keep me burning, burning, burning,"


we belted out on the Baptist church bus


bound for Camp Born Again,


refueled forever we knew for the faith


with the oil of the holy. Hallelujah!





                    II



Through the cracked, creaky


bedroom door of Aunt Martha's farmhouse,


we watched the pyx-eyed priest


choreograph his prayers, bend half-way down


for our uncle's sin and sickness,


smear his forehead with the grease


we wished on the hinges and the Holy Father's


sticking knees.





When, that same second,


our uncle coughed, a great ratling fit


clacking the four-poster against floor boards,


and the priest's thumb slipped,


and oil oozed along the web of wrinkles, down


toward my uncle's one unhearing ear, onto the pillowcase
—the perfect circle of lubricant—we knew


the petitiion was heard





The wheezing stopped when he died.





                    III



In middle age,


I am the ailing one,


the father's hand beneath my Father's:


vestibule of oil poured upon my head.





Oh to hear once again


in the liquid on skin


the purity of the perfeect one,


to smell in the pores the apostolic ointment,


the balm for the no-longer banished,


the penitent prodigal


annointed for death, for life.