OUR HOLY SYMBOLS NEED ATTENTION
As a child I was horrified when I walked into church
and saw a poor man hanging from a cross, those drips
of blood caught in time at the center of his palms,
nails through them and his crossed ankles, his head bent
in death. A murder scene at the end of a red-carpeted aisle.
Then onto the bread I watched people eat that I could not have.
A piece of his body. And the tray of money, something else
I could not have as it passed by. Too much to store in a brain
stacking itself with fears. Those pipes blaring a hymn,
my mother’s voice otherworldly as she stood next to me.
*
Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019) with another book forthcoming in 2023. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com
