Tim McBride

Darkly, . . . Then Face to Face
                         ~I Corinthians 13

We were ten. We’d made our first communion,
confessed our prepubescent sins, had shots for polio
and tetanus. Our left arms bore a tidy smallpox scar—
rites of viral Passover. In spring, Father Flanagan
blessed our throats with two crossed candles,
calling down the stoically beheaded Saint Blaise
to guard us from “all bodily and spiritual harm.”
Innocents, we marched at ease through church
past a hand-carved crucifixion, Bartholomew flayed
in roseate stained-glass, a bronze Ignatius
torn by lions, Lucia painted burning at the stake.

But no tincture, ritual, or saint could quell our fear
of Mr. Paro’s gaze. At Sunday mass,
I’d turn my head when I held the paten
to his throat, his tongue stuck out to take
the Eucharist he couldn’t see,
palms raised in supplication, the same
beseeching look he must have had the night
his store was robbed, his eyes gouged out
by the thumbnails of a man careful to avoid
i.d. in any lineup, photograph, or sketch,
a man who left with $21 and still moves
among us, in polished shoes perhaps and aftershave,
his guardian angel vigilant as ours.