POEM: A Skeptic at Communion

THE AMBER BEAD

I saw a fly within a bead
Of amber cleanly buried;
The urn was little, but the room
More rich than Cleopatra's tomb.
                      --Robert Herrick


     A SKEPTIC AT COMMUNION
after Robert Herrick's "The Amber Bead"

I saw a fly within a dose
Of grape juice, clearly comatose;
The host was Welch's, but the sense
The mystery of immanence.

I saw him floating in the cup
As soon as I had picked it up--
And smiled: thus God prevented me
From drinking Him unworthily.
                       --Jessica Shaver


(Published in South Coast Poetry Journal,
January 1995)