Motherland

I met God in a strip mall bowling alley,

where the clouds had lined up like a congregation

in the sky over the bump & tumble of

abandoned road & the children told me

Jesus was born on the back of a hot bus. I

met him through my Polish grandma

as she pressed dolls the size of my thumb

into my hand & my mother wouldn’t see.

When Jesus forgot to pick me up from ballet

practice & I waited & cried on a rough green couch

I blamed the Christmas Eve candles that

wound the light into cylinders like Grandma’s

hair curlers. Instead of apologies she taught

me how to remember the color red & instead

of forgiveness I learned to count the beads on

a rosary. When she took me for the first

time to that bowling alley with the kids & the clouds

she told me this was my mother’s land,

to soak the sky like a cloth & dye it virgin blue.