Then Elvis Drops to One Knee

          I’m talking to Elvis’s stepbrother, Rick Stanley,and he’s saying that when his daddy died, his mother put him          in foster care, but his foster parents were awful peoplewho held him down and poured Tabasco in his mouth          when he was bad or they thought he was, and then one day

          his mother pulls up in a car with his new daddy,and off they go to 3764 South Bellevue Road in Memphis,          to a place called Graceland, and everybody gets outof the car, and Rick’s walking around, and he ends up          in what’s called the music room, and there’s this guy

          standing by the record player, and he’s tall and slimand has this slicked-back hair, and Rick has no idea          who he is. Help seems to arrive in the nick of time,doesn’t it? Churchy folk are taught to pray for it,          to teach others to pray: a bird that had learned

          to speak was being chased by a hawk, and when it cried,“Saint Thomas, help me!” the hawk fell dead, and the bird          flew on. If you don’t love the Catholic Church,there’s something wrong with you. Still, what about the hawk?          What if the bird were a bad bird and the hawk a good one?

          What if the bird were so bad that no other bird wouldhave him, were covetous, adulterous, gluttonous,          and so on, whereas the hawk were hardworkingand had a family to take care of and tithed 10%          of the birds he caught to the poor and indigent hawks,

          the disabled, the ones who couldn’t hunt for themselves?How kind it is to help others. Yesterday my boy Darrell          Bourque read poems by Donne, Shakespeare, Countee Cullen,and Yusef Komunyakaa to a community of retired Jesuits          in Grand Coteau, LA, and today he sent me this note:

          “There were about 15 residents of the retirement facilitythat came to the reading yesterday, ages 65 to 100.          Some of them drift off as I read, some never make eye contact,some smile from beginning to end. But they love poetry,          just as I love these lovely human beings who have led

          directed, purposeful lives and are now in these latter stagesof unfolding. The 100 year old wanted to know if I knew          some really good atheist poets he could read.”What if we prayed for the wrong things? And got them.          You don’t have to be a priest to be a good person.

          Just be kind. That way, you’ll answer someone else’s prayers,and the other person doesn’t even have to pray to have          their prayers answered. In the music room, Rick Stanleyis just standing there, and Elvis looks at him and walks over          and drops to one knee and says, “Ah always wanted a little brother.”