If Only They Will See Him

They say that Christ appears among his followers, if only
they will see him.
                              Was that you, then, always alone
            those Sundays, in the front pew?

If there is anything about our nature, it is what Holy
we miss before our eyes.
                                  And how could we know it,
            when we’d been blinded so long

by beards and long hair, white robes and skin, wings
and golden haloes, our mouths
                                                            holding the sour
            of sanctified identity.

Though you cleared your pew like a two-day carcass,
though no one would look you
                                                            in the eye but stare
             hellfire through the back of your head—

still, you came and came again. Congregation rumbled
that you were the bachelor priest’s
                                                                      secret lover, yet they all
             rushed to shake his hand at end of service.

And you, oh, you—clean shaven, bald and spectacled,
lacy bloused and sateen slacked,
                                                      stockinged and pumped—
            somehow the same folks who believed

in floods and plagues and miracle healings could not
believe in you.
                       You, who asked for nothing more
            than to follow along with the rest—

to kneel during prayer, to stand during hymn,
to take a man
          into your mouth
             and call it Communion.

Morrow Dowdle has poems published and forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and Mulberry Literary, among others. They have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. They are the poetry editor for Sunspot Literary Journal. They live in Hillsborough, NC.