The pastor's wife considers purgatory

My Pittsburgh son haunts thrift shops,
collects old rosaries, hangs them on nails
down cellar, near his bathroom door.

Buried with their best crystal rosaries,
crocheted among their fingers,
all those old ladies trouble me
when I consider how their every-day
rosaries were taken by their daughters
to be entombed in gold, pasteboard boxes,

until years later when the daughters
were readying for their move
to Florida (for the sake of the mover’s bill)
lightened their load by donating the darker
contents of their dresser drawers to Goodwill.