The May Crownings

(This poem stems from one of my earliest memories. At age 6 I was chosen to carry Mary's crown in procession at the annual May Day celebration at my church - May was, and still is, the month of the BVM. This was 1957 and the Catholic church still did these things. Unbeknown to me I was also carrying the polio which laid me low later that Summer. So, a bittersweet recollection)



Twice chosen was I that May Day morning as we
Prepared to process, shoaling like holy minnows
In the deep green corrugated space of the church hall.
Six years old, tight buttoned into velvet and silk,
A page, hobbled in buckled patent, I stepped out
Towards consecration behind my blue virgin
Mary or Siobhan, Philomena, Fionnula -
The fading schoolyard faces which stare up,
Like evidence of a past atrocity, reject naming now.
But then, awkward and angular,
In elbows and knees that needed growing into,
The girls, sinless in their Sunday dresses,
Cardigans like damp folded wings, held tenderly
Before them baskets of spring flowers as if
They had just alighted and would soon fly on.
Innocent still before heaven I thought the world
Was in that church waiting for me. A crown,
On a cushion the colour of a hematoma,
I carried it past stations of the cross and statues,
Calipered by canyons of parishioners;
Salve Regina, they sang, Salve Regina.
At the node of the aisle crossing we paused,
Priest and altar ahead, sunlight streaming through
Stained glass behind, colouring me purple.
In me an unwanted destiny,
Howling through my bloodstream coursing
Like hounds after hare, hungry for
Neuron and nerve. Marked by chance as elect
In that congregation, no longer carrier but victim,
I raised the cushion straight-arm, achingly high;
The mayflower and thorn crown and me,
As one in the darkness pooling at my feet;
a gnomon, shadow-casting
Into each footstep I made and might ever make.