Saints

back when my mother used to say
my sainted aunt
without much thinking
about what it meant,
it was happily familiar/ before things
got different and strange
like someone else's sweater/

back before shared memory
and so many funerals/ before
i discovered that god was not
in the details,
i had a loose smile,
used like a wreath/

i don't do much
of what i did;
i have no aunts left/
i write family histories
in obscure rhymes
about how the saints
are unrelated/