After baptism

Some things he will see again and again. From car windows, rows
of corn, their strobe a flipbook in which nothing much ever happens,
and stands of white birches, fistfuls of lightning dropped,
then turned wooden.

And other things, not again and again, but at least again. An adolescent rolling
a barbell home from a garage sale. A dead snake the color of toothpaste
and mermaids. A sassafras that laps sun, and, under it, dozens of gray mittens
fuddling applause.

Not, though, the sky from the kitchen sink, where we bathe him. And not
the parishioner who patted his ribs, birdcage that breathes, and she all wonderment
despite the century that shows in her rouge. And in her eyes, blue and weeping
as sores weep.