plenitude

A priest offers his services
against the isms.
His eighty-year-old mother wants
to go to Jerusalem.
She makes him lead her
up and down every hill
in Jerusalem, as if thirty
years of saying daily mass
were compressed into a five-day
trip.

Thirty years ago
he was the head of his
high-school class, a young man
thought to be on the trail
of greatness, unlike Monet,
painting and repainting
breaking ice floes and stacks
of wheat in winter.