Custodians

Retired from other trades, they wore Work clothes again to mop the johns And feed the furnace loads of coal. Their roughened faces matched the bronze Of the school bell the nun would swing To start the day. They limped but smiled, Explored the secret, oldest nooks: The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled With inkwell desks, the caves beneath The stage on Bingo night. The pastor Bowed to the powers in their hands: Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys To countless locks. They fixed the lights In the crawl space above the nave And tolled the bells for funeral rites. Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs Their scripted names and well-waxed floors, Those keepers winking through the years And whistling down the corridors.