POEM: Ode To a Statue of St. Francis

Sometimes birds like to shit on little St. Francis,
Man of peace. This is an occupational hazard
Of all garden-art, religious or not.
You can complain all you want:
Find a reason to hate birds, or
Never again trust a shady spot
But when you are brother to all things,
Which includes things with wings that shit all over everything,
Then you must have a cotton heart.
Otherwise your insides become a stone and
Then how do you respond to all the sadness of a world,
That scampers like a rat across a slate roof, that is
Sometimes seen, but always makes its presence known?

Clean it up and press on. That’s all you can do.
And if that bird shits on you nine-hundred and ninety-eight times,
You will clean it up nine-hundred and ninety-nine.

Watch a spider repair its web after a storm.
It’s incapable of sighing.
Remorse does not fit within the thimble frame of its
Rigid exoskeleton, it rebuilds.

Watch over me, shit-stained Francis. And
Protect every creature that dozes deep in my savage bones.
I will take you, mossy and white, or any way you come.