The Saint-Maker

Church is a machine for the making of saints,
not so different from the making of sausage
the process of which you don’t want to see.

It may be the same with the saints––
God at work in the human soul, sweating
betraying an image we cannot abide.

But who’s to say what goes on inside any man
woman or child? God knows and perseveres,
poking, prodding, sometimes with fire

seeming oblivious to the pain induced, which
must be serving some purpose, some use,
hidden as is the process for making sausage.