Matt Kindelmann | + Follow Poet |
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The Sacred Part of Town

Barcelona looked like a church 
as I walked down La Rambla
in search of a vacant room 
on that warm morning.
The balconies of the flanking 
high-rise apartments were pews
festooned with holy day
football flags and bedsheets.
The white haired flower seller 
sat silently with his serrated scissors 
and buckets of sugar water 
as if listening to a confession.
People who passed me 
on that righteous path 
became parishioners 
with detailed back stories.
The mustachioed man walking 
his dog near the grass 
was a lapsed Catholic 
and Spanish novelist
taking a break from 
the tapping of the typewriter.
The chubby middle-aged lady
in high heels and a skirt,
who carried folders and puffed 
on a quick thin cigarette, 
was a museum secretary 
with the curator's copies 
and a mother who cooked up 
fish and paella for her children 
every Friday during Lent.
The invisible clouds that 
wafted from the restaurants 
smelling of grilled seafood 
and lemons and garlic
were like the prayers that a 
priest's incense personified. 
I later spent a humble evening 
in a small rented room
washing my socks and 
shorts in the white sink 
and reading the boxscores 
and baseball epistles 
from a day old New York Times.
I studied batting averages 
as my underclothes slowly dried
on the back of a wooden chair
with the help of an electric fan.

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