Bye

I've stopped into Saint Francis a few times lately. It's beautiful inside - with good lighting and high cream colored walls, a lot of gold stuff, old wood, stations of the cross. And I am amazed at how many men are in the church. When I was a kid, there was just a very small, old, stooped lady of course in black who spent most of her days cleaning the candle stands where people lit candles for the faithfully departed and those people of theirs who are still breathing and need some kind of physical uplift. But from what I notice now, there are more men in attendance than women. And they are not old, which is just as much a surprise as the fact that they are men. 

This afternoon, I was sitting in a pew reading Portnoys Complaint for the second time - the first in college - writing a paper on it and receiving an A but only outrage from my father who was paying the tab.  So I am in church today and in walk two of the most handsome men I have ever seen. Young, Brooks Brothers-ish, maybe Irish, maybe brothers, windswept hair, happy to be out of the cold. One of them had a beautiful brown overcoat the color of fallen leaves after Thanksgiving. I wondered why they were there, what did they do, where were they coming from, what do they hope to get from their visit. 

Just before on a subway, I misread one of those subway poems ...  it said I am the wind and you are the chimes. Mistakenly, I read ... I am the wind and you are the crimes. I like mine more.