Catholics learn early in life to count:
The sins between stackable chair and chair,
The white nights between Lent and release,
The days between one moment and their last.
Two doors and six stair-steps up, the senior altar boys
show me how best to climb a wooden ladder—
rung by rung, seven slats into the blackness
that kisses every mystery of the holy attic.
But if I pinch the memory just so, it’s a ladder
to heaven. Someone is singing a hymn I haven’t
heard before, a hymn about wine and water.
The attic-sky is spackled with stars:
eight, twelve, seventeen, ninety-six.