I was just a child when the Holy Mother
ascended to the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghostess but way out in Right
Field hoping no one would slice one my
way I saw her rising over the Lutheran Ch.
altho I thought it should have been Saint
James where the Virgin Mary knelt in wait
for levity to take her up like dark matter
in fields of swirling whirling circling dark
energy while down on a baseball diamond
we were playing hard ball with the bullies
bat in hand at the plate & with everything
ordained from above while yet from below
we (or at least) me knew something else
was real, so somebody else was out there
and I could just see her slowly and steady
rising up in this crystal blue Summer sky
I never saw that way before until this ball
came suddenly with the crack of a ball bat
hurtling down toward completely unprepared…

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.