Acts of Charity

Acts of Charity

        For E. H.

Still, caritas, like agape, is better

translated as love, but a whole-

hearted, impartial, and self-

less variety that in its human

incarnation is said to hint at the nature

of God’s love.  Caritas isn’t

something only the poor, the sick,

or prisoners need, and neither is it

necessarily what the rich and healthy

are exclusively able to provide.

                                    Kate Braestrup

                                    Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

i. First night in the orphanage

I wonder if this particular heart-

beat is an act of charity:

clocks and boogeymen in the black

room ticking against every

board and corner, orphan hearts

falling up to the ceiling

like a fountain, only to cas-

cade down into a split 

wide pine floor held

by nails that work

their way through the stocking

or chin (when they fall

completely, or are pushed)

by every close call, boys

all staunched by their first night

in this dark.

For kids in this kind of night,

sound and shadow

should be friends,

their metronome of squeak and creak

dipped into like the cold bowl

of holy water in the vestibule,

brass bowl, corroded bowl,

old bowl measure of charity.  

That sound should delight,

like a gosling splashing down

on the abandoned mill

pond on any given early August

morning.

It shouldn’t be the catch

in his breath when the lock’s twisted,

when the only opening  and closing

is the thick curtain crossing his esophagus

in a smother.  It should be a sigh

of relief, rather like the opening

of an old book: the dry spine crackle

the moth falling to the floor,

or the daisies, because his mother loved

daisies. 

But there’s a spook
in syrup-thick dark.  And he has a thin

companion.

Who protects us from all this?

 ii. or, more intimate:

I’ve come to wonder if it was an act

of charity that made the handy-

man drill four rows of holes

three in each row, two where a head

might be, two where feet might be

in the closet door near the attic

of this orphanage for special boys,

so in the 2x6 space they wouldn’t

suffocate they wouldn’t panic they

wouldn’t smell the last boy who

was in there too long…there’s twelve

holes to see and hear, the door’s

strong enough to lean against, it’s

locked,

but it’s a small closet, just enough

to be shoved, bum the head

of a drawn match sparking.  The boys,

the dark the twelve charitable

holes—I imagine

the handyman taking the door

off its hinges, laying it

flat on two saw horses and,

selecting a big enough bit, precise

as compass and drill, puts the point

in one pencil mark after another.

(I want to know who measured

up for this?  Was a boy closed in

just for this?  The way the tailor came

and mark their inseam and even so

the pants come back too short every time)

So let’s say his name was James

and he holds the amputated door

and watches each blond curl

of wood fall until there’s light

and confetti, so many of them

that they are on their own charity

thrown up like dander, like feathers,

like those birds falling on the face 
of the the pond

when he used to go goose or duck hunting

with his father,  who was last spring

a bare chest like this door, not a mallard
at all, but his worn favorite tartan: Scottish black
watch

and James gets sick but nobody

knows why because he hasn’t said

one word since he was dropped off

in front in July…but the handyman

knows, so he sweeps and sweeps

and leans into James just enough

and hands him a bit of sandpaper

because he knows boys and holes

and fingers that are toy guns

even in a closet in the dark.  They’ll aim

through each hole at each lead thin

shadow and rub their finger

on something made soft as mother-of-pearl

though they don’t know what that is.