Ponce de Leone

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.