"Standing Before the Relic at the Basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges" by James Davis May from PRESENCE

Standing Before the Relic at the Basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges

In my imagination, he's played by one of the good dads
from my childhood—sometimes my own father, a believer
in simple decency, handshakes, thank-yous,
cleaning his parents' graves when he visits them,
as he did with me last month, taking out a handkerchief
(yes, he always has a handkerchief, he's that decent)
and wiping bird droppings and dirt off their tombstone
in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, still wearing the suit
and tie he wore that day to the office where no one else
has worn a suit and tie for at least a decade.
So of course the saint who begged Pilate for the body
would have washed that body, dabbed at the blood,
some of which I want to believe is in the grainy cloth
encased in the vial I study as a severe, supervising priest
recites a blessing. Assume the blood behaved
like ordinary blood, that there was nothing unusual
in the way it smeared or shimmered over the skin,
nothing remarkable about the clots or crusts,
and assume there was no sign to betray the miracle
that was or wasn't about to happen, and then imagine
how heavy the blood-drying air felt for the saint—
how much faith would you need to still have faith
after handling that cold, torn body? At that hour,
after that violence, if there was doubt, there was still
this decency: that holy impulse that makes some of us
get down on our painful knees, whether it's to pray
or to scrub the grime off our father's name.

Copyright © 2025 James Davis May All rights reserved
from Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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