The Woman Who Walks Through Church

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 17, 2000 by James Silas Rogers

   As with many whose lives
   have been one long drift,
   it's hard to guess Madeline's age.
   Surely beyond sixty:
   fist-sized bunions rip through
   her sneakers, and she exposes
   tooth-bare gums whenever
   her mouth jerks wide in a tic.

   Far too old for the clothes
   she likes to wear: Heavy
   Metal t-shirts and Dolly Parton
   wigs found at garage sales.
   She hovers near the church,
   though often only to sit hours
   in a pew, rolling shreds of paper
   into pointless small periwinkles.

   She lives among the long forgotten:
   Halves of conversations rattle
   through her days, a long tape loop
   of old disputes. She will blurt,
   What was I supposed to do? or
   I can't help it! as if she's taking
   crank calls from some irrelevant pain
   not even she could fully retrieve.

   Madeline is crazy, all right.
   On Sundays she hobbles into Mass
   just before the host is elevated.
   At the moment of consecration
   she crosses behind the priest's back
   and out the other door -- believing,
   perhaps, she can snatch some straw
   of sanctity from our camp of the sane.

James Silas Rogers St. Paul, Minn.