Mass—May 8, 1988 Sun-wrapped, the glass of wine shone gold, Released the subtle smell of grapes, On the table near it lay the bread, Sun-white and small. Within the upper room: Chairs pulled close; Wildflowers, purple, yellow— Just a few—in a drinking glass; Paper napkin in place of lace. Through the open window The sound of fountain water Falling between the notes of Bird songs.... Then the Spirit broke the hold of time and space, Filled the words priest spoke Transformed bread — Bright white like Spring lambs — Into the Lamb of God; Transformed sun-warmed wine Into His life blood Sacrificed for us: For you, Tom For you, Sharla For you, Robert For you, Marian And too for all whose Moslem hands Picked the grapes Harvested the wheat — Crushed, threshed, milled, poured, baked: Be blessed, In and our of time touched With that faith, that love we shared There in that sun-lit place—we four Who touched hands, hugged, brushed peace With soft lips on each other's cheeks, Together ate the broken bread, Together drank the golden wine, Together communed with our God Who speaks, looks, laughs, touches others Through us. Reprinted with permission from St Anthony's Messenger Copyright © 1994 by Marian O'Brien Paul

A Sibylline (Im)precation by Marian O'Brien Paul

fifty-four ten years shy of death for my dad but for me? how long? seventy-four perhaps the length of thread allowed to unravel uncut until then for my mom or — better? worse? — perhaps the unlimited number of years assured me by my schizophrenic son who swears his prayers guarantee me this but of course he has forgotten one significant ingredient for his filial wish — youth so I worry on occasion lest his prayer come true and in slow motion I lose one tooth after another followed by each hair my vision darkened like a blown out bulb and I need worry no longer about fat to store cholesterol in nor drop of blood to swish it through desiccated veins shriveled like strands of dried grapes stretched longer than their stems I wonder how long it takes for matter to return molecule by molecule to pure energy (eternity) Reprinted with permission from Celebrate: A Collection of Women's Writings, Vol II Copyright © 1998 by Marian O'Brien Paul

TEARS by Marian O'Brien Paul

protect us, the article said, rid the body of "harmful chemicals produced during stress thereby breaking the chain of events that leads" to disease of the heart and damage of the brain and all the time I simply thought that tears implied the breaking of a heart, a terrible dis-ease resulting more often than not from some mad emotional incline. Of course, experience had already shown me how a "Good Cry" * does wonders, but you'll excuse my surprise at tears' much more pro-active role. "Um hum," I say and shake my head, remember another article I recently read. It blamed stress for depressed immuno-systems—result? flu—unless you have had your yearly dose of vaccine for influenza. "Hmmm," I say and read on, learn scientists aren't sure, merely suspect, having found "interesting hints" of "connections among stress, tears, heart attacks, and"—what's this?—"Alzheimer's disease [the stress is mine!]." I say, "Wow," distressed to read that your chance increases by fourteen for heart attack the day that follows your beloved's decease; but tears, this article asserts, reduce occurrence of such secondary deaths. Further on the page I'm informed a recent outline, product of British research found in Lancet, prophesies adverse effects of stress on one's hippocampus (not an organ I'd been given to worry much about) —seems its job is helping one to learn, to remember, yet stress disrupts the process so Alzheimer's may be triggered or made worse by stress, the erudite Brits hypothesize. It's got partly to do with sugar, you see, in solution: stress inhibits the hippocampus to such extent it reduces its qlucose uptake by thirty percent (in case you weren't aware, brain cells die when deprived of glucose). In addition, stress is not content to cause just slow starvation but insists on complications, halving "brain-derived neutrophic factor" a nerve-growth aid to maintainance of the brain, the very chemical known to be on wane in the hippocampi of each Alzheimer patient. "Hmmm," I repeat and ponder a neighbor's fate— An example illustrating the ancient riddle of the Sphinx, he was well on the return trip toward his youth This former community pillar, happily, did not realize the extent of his regressive descent although his wife, unhappily, was so aware. Bent on "wifely duty," she cared for this aging "child." She endured humiliation when in the midst of Mass he approached the altar and drained the communion cup down his throat then turned and smiled as though praised like a good boy for "drinking it all up." In an odd quandry, almost obscene, she begged him not to leave at night when he fought for her virtue and his, declaring it highly immoral if he stayed they two being merely engaged and the neighborhood full of long-toothed gossips. Eventually this story, had its happy/unhappy end—on a day they two, or she at least, planned to spend with their progeny: married daughters, sons, grandsons and grandaughters. Having dressed her husband in his best, after washing his face and combing his hair, she bade him sit at the kitchen table and read (or look) at the Sunday comics while she dressed herself. Always an obedient child (except when it came to defending his wife's honor as seen above), he sat. And looked. And sat. And continued to look, ignoring the phone, the doorbell, the window knocks, the splintering thuds on the kitchen door before it was crashed in by his eldest son who rushed past, receiving the slightest tilt of his father's head. We heard about it later, how the wife lay dead on the double bed where she'd conceived her sons and daughters. A massive heart attack, they said. I muse now on this article's contents and wonder— I can not believe she hadn't cried, and yet the sum of all those tears was not enough to save her broken heart. And he? What caused his broken brain? What sorrows had he shoved deep, deep inside to fester so unwept? *Most of the medical information in this poem was derived from "The Good Cry," by Tom Majeski, Catholic Digest, January 1997 Reprinted with permission from Celebrate: A Collection of Women's Writings, Vol II Copyright © 1998 by Marian O'Brien Paul

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