Migrants
An altar migrated from Mexico,
not just the little table
where they set wine and crackers
the whole damned wall installation,
fifty feet high and twenty five feet wide
gold-plated chiseled stone.
Ol’ Frank Miller got a bargain.
Five grand, and he bought
the thing without ever seeing it.
A family from Juanojuato,
patrons in 1921
during the Great Rebellion,
sold it and shipped it out
in soiled hay
hoping the smell would repel
curious bonitos who might steal it.
All those years of working for God
in mines, quarries, and farms
feeding artists and priest,
had the rebels gotten it
they would have traded
for enough powder
to keep even the Marines out of Montezuma,
and only now an insurance company claims
it is priceless.
When it arrived they installed it
in the Mission Inn’s chapel.
Dedicated it to St. Francis of Assissi
I don’t spell well enough
to write in stone,
and Latin is a dead language.
I won’t quip, to much,
about Frank misspelling the man’s name
who inspired his mom to name him Frank.
He was, after all, Congregationalist not Catholic
But on the alter
where stood a statue of Mary
is the hotel logo,
a “raincross” encrusted in gems
(probably real ones)
an icon invented by Frank,
Miller not Assisi, with a bell,
‘cause Frank just liked bells,
topped with an Indian ruin for firefly
they used, he claimed, to make rain,
above is a gold plated baby Jesus
in Joseph’s arms
fleeing Bethlehem.