Chaplain

I heard you are in so much pain they had to pull you, 
hand over hand, from morphine’s lagoon into full glare, so you can decide 
how they cut your body next. Your body is growing

wrong. For once, it’s beyond your control, you who scoffed at God 
and religion, at anyone who couldn’t keep up. I rarely saw you offer 
kindness, always disdain. But this is not consequence. For God’s sake,

my theodicy’s more sophisticated than supposing your suffering 
a divine comeuppance. Yet somehow when events 
bear true to the bigoted, reptilian mind, they have a way