the travelling reliquary of st. teresa of avila

We are sitting talking in our pew
while the reliquary takes up the aisle
with a ring of devotees around it.

It is a nice piece of furniture, a travelling church,
an altar set in glass and inside
a reliquary of one finger

or it may be a knee bone. Saints
were often dismembered of their bones
a fragment here and there, a toe

a flake of elbow, a shoulder
scraped. ‘Would you like a piece
of bone?’ the surgeon asked. No thanks.

But if I could travel in a reliquary
and spy on two women talking
instead of looking at me: finger

no less but all of me
in the air, the legend of eating
partridges with the fervour of praying

and my dress with the coloured hem
I wore to give myself away
a gift no one was asking.

Instead they go on talking while the priest
announces my little house, my reliquary
is closing for the night. Then they come.

elizabeth smither