Sermon as My Twenty Five Year Old Self (A Found Sermon)

Tuesday, May 5, 2002

Point to the part of my body
you love most, I say

You answer sliding
a finger into the slopes
of my stomach that veer
internal oblique to my hip
bone--sacred ridge

and your tongue, a mountaineer
     easing over the peak
at dusk to discover
a new day
the femoral crease a fertile
and prolific ditch
which swims as a canal
to the spermatic cord or uterus,
a second entryway
to some temple.

Then the ilioinguinal nerve
             alighting--
veiny evangelist guiding
your nose across
and you and me inside.

Our chests pressed together,
we, who did not believe
in God, resemble nothing
if not two palms
at prayer.

Do all new believers
arrive this way?

I whisper kiss me there
and you do, our bodies
all grooves and slots, wheeled ligaments
fitted to tracks, traveling
a well-trodden path.

In the beginning God
carved his signature on the earth,
rivers and coves looped through
a crusty canvas--
I feel molded and fired,
reborn faithful to only you:
flesh of my flesh, hallowed bone.

You lift your mouth from my skin, ascend,
and bright-eyed, converted, I say
this spot
road to Galilee
my soul
belongs to you.

Amen.