First Day

This is something that started in 1998 and was revised in 2004.

First Day

One glance proclaims it: I am unwelcome here.
I trespass, my fly-fire dim amid the halos,
a parasite shunted from chorus to heavenly

choir. My language is clatter. I caterwaul.
My tongue bloats in the fine air of paradise,
a litany of mispronunciations, elocution

disrobing the minstrel sinner. They herald
the influx of beasts from the famine:
godwits and zebu and one jumping mouse.

Blessed be I? Never mind my felicitous past?
I invoke the words of Sister Carmen Cruz:
“Heaven will be candy-studded, dark chocolate

doves and boulevards paved with divinity.”
One strong wind could suffer me into darkness,
away from the tedious aspirations

of the born-again. Others have failed
before me, they say. Others could not
be scrubbed clean. Some brilliance fades.