Smartish Pace

Saints no longer levitate at vespers, keening
like sea-birds. The plucked-out eyes
of the faithful don't grow back.

Instead of martyrs bleeding perfumed milk,
refreshed by boiling oil, nowadays
someone's insurance rates don't rise

after rear-ending a Porsche; someone leaves
her purse on a city bus, and finds it
next morning, untouched. Instead of lepers

healing, Murphy's Law is for a half-hour
repealed. When lights go out in jails
and mental wards, and felons slit each others'

throats, and certifiables mumble, screech,
and flail, who cares to know how many Joans
see blazing lights or hear angelic psalms,

how many Josephs break restraints
and rise toward heaven, uttering shrill,
unearthly calls?

Charles Harper Webb