Each Sunday morning finds him sitting in
the barber’s chair, soothed by the slap and slop
of shaving foam, the razor’s raw edge on
his skin, the heat of the towel pressed against
his freshly shaven face—he is absolved.
Less grand, perhaps, than Sundays years before;
when absolution came from gods who deigned
to stoop and talk to him in ancient texts,
and rituals by candlelight. He’d felt
a part of something then, and tries to think
of when it was the red-and-white-striped pole
replaced the steeple and the cross, but finds
he cannot say. His faith, towards the end,
had stretched so thin that it was hard to see
if it was there at all; eroded like
a cliff, which seems so static even as
the wind and waves exact their steady price—
when it came time to draw new maps, that cliff
had frayed much farther than he ever would
have guessed. His world is simpler now. After
the barber, he drinks coffee, black and strong,
and thinks of solid things that he can see,
the taste, the touch, the leisurely walk home.