Song to the Eucharist
Pinched there between the priest’s fingers
it is a moon, full and round on the surface
of this lake, way back in the water’s memory
of my home in Havana. Break it and you
are free, crumbs will lead you home. A fist,
the kind that pounded my father’s skull in
as he refused to snitch on his friends at work,
the men who plotted the overthrow of Fidel.
There were no churches in my childhood,
only the charred piece of earth where they once
stood, cinders burnt to rubble, black
bricks like the broken smile of a boxer.
When the priest raises the Eucharist heavenward,
a clock of white birds take flight from a cane field,
where we find our lives once again, right there
where we hear Trio Matamoros’ “Son de la loma.”