I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread lives forever. John 6:51
Ponce de Leone
In the back of the humid procession
the straggler in the brown woolen habit
slogs through the mud, the triple knotted rope
at his waist matted with razor nettles.
He makes his way through The Mass every day
sustained; while you fidget anxious to push on
in the swamp to find the mythic fountain,
dying by each mosquito-bitten inch
when daily the bread of life flows
from the priest's ever youthful hands.
Ponce de Leone