Holy Unction

                         I   
  
  
 
"Give me oil in my lamp, 
 
keep me burning, burning, burning," 
 
we belted out on the Baptist church bus 
 
bound for Camp Born Again, 
 
refueled forever we knew for the faith 
 
with the oil of the holy. Hallelujah! 
 
 
 
                      II   
  
 
Through the cracked, creaky 
 
bedroom door of Aunt Martha's farmhouse, 
 
we watched the pyx-eyed priest 
 
choreograph his prayers, bend half-way down 
 
for our uncle's sin and sickness, 
 
smear his forehead with the grease 
 
we wished on the hinges and the Holy Father's 
 
sticking knees. 
 
 
 
When, that same second, 
 
our uncle coughed, a great ratling fit 
 
clacking the four-poster against floor boards, 
 
and the priest's thumb slipped, 
 
and oil oozed along the web of wrinkles, down 
 
toward my uncle's one unhearing ear, onto the pillowcase 
 ”the perfect circle of lubricant”we knew 
 
the petitiion was heard 
 
 
 
The wheezing stopped when he died. 
 
 
 
                      III   
  
  
 
In middle age, 
 
I am the ailing one, 
 
the father's hand beneath my Father's: 
 
vestibule of oil poured upon my head. 
 
 
 
Oh to hear once again 
 
in the liquid on skin 
 
the purity of the perfeect one, 
 
to smell in the pores the apostolic ointment, 
 
the balm for the no-longer banished, 
 
the penitent prodigal 
 
annointed for death, for life.