Explanations trend toward the eternal,
focused on a gasp of insight in which I realize 
I am an organism of thought, a cathedral
of flesh and breath buttressed by granite groins.
Cement steadies my touch. Lichen covers 
my face. My bowels move through the history
of space. Bats roost in my belfry. 

When I walked tall among the tales
of children, I lived in the air of singing.
My mother fed me ham and eggs. 
I purred softly through the night, wanting 
nothing, mindless as a ball of cotton.

Now that I’m a fixed geography, is there any reason
to change? When a storm comes it batters my roof,
and I realize I miss nothing about being human.
If I were a man again, I would fear my daily employment,
dread the way light comes at dawn to freshen 
my eyes. I would need what no one can give me
and live in a house where no one could find me.

Stained-glass windows look on transparency.
Concrete traps my mind. I hear the organ
and the choir, the labor of patience. I am the priest 
and the congregants, the stones that constitute
my walls and the wind that brushes against them,
a body politic of masonry and memory. 

Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama. His poetry has previously appeared in Off the Coast, The Florida Review, Asheville Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly and elsewhere. His first book of poetry is Late Alabama (Outskirts, 2020)