Obsession?

A poet — let’s skip specifics — bristles.

Obsession? Could I be me without it?
This isn’t remunerative work. 
But…compulsion. What do I think?
Proclivities are learned, fixations inherited,
or heaven-sent (whatever that means).

My mother cleaned incessantly.
The bathroom first: she scoured, 
scrubbed, wiped away, and polished,
straining to sanitize each aperture 
and pore of faucets, handles, basins 
(holes in particular were suspect),
as if they harboured those execrable
bits of human existence that
damned us all. 
This daily ritual of purification consumed her. 
Mornings, she went at her custodial tasks 
with the enthusiasm of someone 
assigned to uphold the ius divinum, 
or the keeping of a temple. 

In grade 10 Bio, Felix and I dissected frogs.
Mostly, he cut. I watched, somewhat awed,
and tried to draw with pencil
the gauzy, membranous segments
he laid bare with every incision 
into a creature’s fleshly fabric.
Felix would quietly pray
before inserting the scalpel. 
When working, he was all focus
and solemnity. I still picture him,
his deferential expression
as he bent over a specimen — 
a novice at the sacrificial altar. 

Felix’s father was blue collar,
a bona fide workingman (plumber or 
mechanic), reserved, unassuming, 
restless, according to my friend.
Every night before retiring to bed
he’d listen with rapt attention
to a recording of Gregorian chants, 
letting the calm, wave-like cadence 
of hymns sung by Benedictine monks
carry away the daily grot, and, perhaps, 
absolve him of some wrongdoing. 

Let me tell you, those cloistered men
are fixated on purity through self-denial. 
And yet, I dwell on the fact
that their chanting transmutes the 
mortal, adulterated matter of the corpus —
chest, lungs, and vocal chords —
into sound pure enough for angels’ ears.