What is miraculous is that a natural event like a stain from leaking water and a supernatural event like seeing Mary converge.
     -Chicago Tribune April 19th, 2005
 
 
Moonlight filters through streetlight
and the whir of concrete under
part-time alcoholics and late-night
employees performs a kind of music.
 
Around Her the smell of population
is replaced by pine incense and wilting
flowers. The gifts of desperate prayer
hover around Her salt-stained image
 
thick enough to eat. Below Her, peacefully
kicking in his sleep, a man draped
in blankets starts to dream
that his children still dream of him.
 
           It is not our place to ask why She
           reaches out her hand to comfort him.