Church Basement

Church Basement

Here we learn to ease open our hearts

and to hold them open with both hands,

letting something human flow among us -

for the one with the lichened smile,

the one still proud to have blown Chuck Berry,

the one who can argue herself out of everything

but the next drink,

the one who knows how to introduce someone

else's urine into his bladder,

the one who ran over his baby.

Here we hold our kin with a hard affection.

Here love is a verb, active, transformative.