the Basilica of Saint-Sernin
is filled with holy relics
thorns and splinters, blessed sand
assorted bones of clerics

religion’s a lot like magic
when it comes to this
a flair for the ecstatic
a fingerbone to kiss

maybe if I lived in prayer
did what was asked of me
one day it could be my hand there
in a dusty reliquary

or maybe they’d string up all my bones
a wind chime dusted by curates
clonking out my melancholy tones
in a breeze of passing tourists

but I think I’d rather be put in the earth
an apple tree overhead
an altogether miraculous birth
apples of green and red