Come Wednesday Morning

For more than twenty years 
I have bagged groceries 
at our parish food pantry 
then attended noon Eucharist. 
In the interstices between 
feeding and being fed 
I sit in the silent sanctuary, 
empty of bodily presences, 
but fully populated by 
spirits of past parishioners. 
We keep vigil with the Christ 
of the small, red light. 
His almost hidden radiance, 
like the wavering flames 
of shades that linger here, 
lightens mid-week darkness, 
rekindles the guttering flame 
of my shadowed life.