William Miller
William Miller’s sixth collection of poetry, Recovering Biker, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press in 2017. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Penn Review, Westerly (Australia), Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and West Branch. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
A Priest in Normandy
Father is so old he barely remembers
the village where he was born—
mist on the morning fields,
his mother dying of fever.
The church took him in,
acolyte, deacon, priest.
He raised the Host through
through two world wars,
forgave a thousand sins
inside a black wooden booth.
He lived so long, he saw
his flock dwindle to
three nuns, a blind widow.
a beggar who only wanted
to get out of the cold.
This morning, a stranger
sits in the back pew,
dark-skinned, nervous, an
immigrant from the camp
outside the city walls.
He walks up to receive
and slits Father’s throat
so suddenly, he dies before
he knows he’s been murdered.
He never hears the awful screams,
the name of a foreign god
shouted to the ancient rafters…
Christ still hangs on the cross,
though his wounds only seem
to bleed–the blood
on the stone floor flows quickly,
freely, a dark sacrament.
© 2018 William Miller
