The Lourdes Touch

In 1995, in Indonesia, people traveled to be licked
by a cow whose tongue was thought to cure.

That miracle, led to bodies
It might heal, has learned, by now,
About the rewards for licking
Chests and stomachs, throats and ears.
Often, though, returning to feed
After a changeless morning,
That cow must wonder how little
It takes to please those pilgrims.
And naturally, we ask ourselves
What helplessness sends someone
To a farm made holy by hope?
We think of the lotteries
That form lines outside all-night stores,
Men and women carrying
Tickets to their televisions
With the beautiful long odds
Of salvation, remembering
How, each morning, we insist
That something unforeseen will cure
Our mortality, the tongue
Of God finding our faces as
We gather for prayer and praise,
Baring our sicknesses until
Our hearts feel slathered and saved
By the Lourdes touch, driving past cows
By the thousands, all of them
Wonders, perhaps, if we allow
Their rough, willing tongues to bathe us.

*Gary Fincke's latest collection is Standing aorund the Heart (Arkansas, 2005). His collection of stories, Sorry I Worried You, won the Flannery O'Connor Prize and was published by Georgia in 2004; Amp'd, his nonfiction account of his son's life in two signed rock bands, was published by Michigan State in 2004.