Rose Poto

Penal Rosary

By sleight of hand, he manages to twist
his ring from thumb to finger secretly.
Five fingers hide one cross inside a fist,
ten beads against a palm, one mystery:
his faith in what he feels but cannot see.

Decades pass. Now priests, now witches burn;
sinner and saint converge as tables turn
until Crusader’s one with Saracen.
Our penance is to learn what to unlearn
and, having come full circle, start again.

Note: The penal rosary was a single-decade rosary
used during the Penal Times in Ireland . It was
easily concealed in the hand. An attached ring
was moved from finger to finger as each decade
was prayed.

Zeitoun

Zeitoun, Cairo, 1968

What if you were, as I suspect,
a hologram,
a Coptic tourist trap, a scam
the mortal eye could not detect?

What if photons, fiddled with,
beguiled the eye,
glittering in the Cairo sky,
a brilliant flimflam veiled in myth?

What if the world, wanting a mother,
embraced a ruse,
thousands of Muslims, Christians, Jews,
fooled into seeing the light together?

And what if the only light to see
is in the faces
of foolish crowds in sacred places?
Our Lady of Light, enlighten me.