Steve McDonald
A Blessing
When the clerk asks that he wear a mask,
offers him a mask to wear, he lifts
his stained t-shirt from the hair of his belly
like a battle flag, from the hair of his belly
he lifts his t-shirt to cover his lips and says
Don’t tell me in this free country what to wear.
And Mary Magdalene lifts to the sound
of his lips a burial shroud from an empty tomb.
And Francis from Assisi wraps with cloth
his body’s five wounds. And a thousand-year
oak in Native lands blesses with rounds
of bark the wood of his heart and says,
This year acorns will not fall to the ground.
And the world wears a mask and washes its hands.
—Submitted on 08/09/2020
Steve McDonald is the author, most recently, of Credo (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018) and Golden Fish / Dark Pond (Comstock Review, 2015). His poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Boulevard, Nimrod, The Atlanta Review, Rattle, and other journals. He lives with his wife in Murrieta, Calif. Online at stevemcdonaldpoetry.com.
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