“There is a fervor that I do not surge with,/A saintliness with which I do not sing.”
There is an arc of maturation that
You wrote me a prescription for. It reads:
Come to consider your religion flat;
Hang up your relics and your rosary beads.
Appreciate the stained glass and the stories
As merely that—implying then that I
Could see these things as having special glories
If what they stood for was a lifelong lie.
Any spare change of faith that you emerge with,
Keep it as consolation. Here’s the thing:
There is a fervor that I do not surge with,
A saintliness with which I do not sing.
And that is what you think you’re talking to.
I, faithless, hang on. So I think it’s true.
A. A. Gunther is a Manhattan legal writer by day and a Long Island poet by night. Her short fiction can be found in Dappled Things, while her poetry appears in The Friday Poem and ONE ART and is forthcoming in Ekstasis and Mezzo Cammin. She has eight younger siblings, at least two of whom can vouch for her character.
