Jesus' Pour

Sunday morning while taking a leak
I got to thinking about our trip to Europe
on the Holland-America ocean liner
SS Maasdam, February 1956:

my intelligent father, 
my beautiful mother,
my supercilious sister
and me. We dress for dinner.

I wash my hands and face
and Brylcreem my hair.

My mother and even my sister 
lipsticked in long dresses.

The legs of all the tables
have been bolted to the floor.

	* * *

My father pulls and pushes 
my mother into her seat.

Jesus, our starched white steward,
announces his coming
with a merry jingle of ice cubes
and briskly fills our glasses,

somehow mine 
with chocolate egg-cream.

	* * *

Saturday night, a smell of ozone.

Zeus in a fury zaps his electrics
igniting the heaven, hurling his block-busters,
flights of gannets flee him in terror.

Poseidon surfaces, pitchfork in hand
summoning chaos, sky-high tsunamis
rise to his mastery, monsters a-roar.

And Boreas blowing to burst his cheeks
flays our poor Maasdam, flings her about,
Mahetibel's favorite maimed mouse.

	* * *
Chandeliers sway
above a suddenly silent room;
place-settings play
musical chairs;

stem vases topple and spill.
Jesus approaches
(as lights flicker, plates crash,
grapefruits role uphill)

and asks in all solemnity
would I rather have
a short glass of water 
or a l--o--n--g glass of water?

Not pausing for an answer
he raises the pitcher high above his head
and from a fixed zenith all his own
beams a perfect silver-gleaming ray	
into my crazily slaloming glass
not a drop awry. Unbelievable.
	
	* * *

My ashen father, my gasping mother, 
my whimpering sister and I
cling to our table understanding only
that God isn't real,

that earth is where everyone lives
and dies in the sink of gravity,
and that nothing on earth 
or elsewhere could save us now.