-The remains of St John the Baptist have been found in an ancient reliquary in a
5th century monastery… archaeologists have claimed.
Telegraph Newspaper , U.K.
 

My father is nearly deaf now and going blind.
He cannot stand without his walker but there
Is no comfort in thinking he has lost or been spared
The power to suffer or grieve or fear
The gathering darkness, the silence now
Closing in. Still, he is chipper, and full of
Good talk, trying to keep up with the flying
World, desperate, at ninety-three, to shun
Monologues about then, when everyone was
Alive and he was a force. At sixty-three,
I'm still a son, want to go back the same as
He-more maybe- to the machines that shrilled,
Ground their way through snow, panted, yellow
Streamliners, loose suits. All smoke sang. The elms
And oaks have stood up to an awful summer,
And wait with the dry grass and dry flowers. This
Week, the state fairgrounds throw search beams from the
Cattle barns and pavilions, straight gauzy
White spears that wipe a sky where heat lightning
Stutters. The frightening calliope
Ripples, echoes. Dad lives close by; people
Park in his yard, drop caramel corn bags
Taffy apple wrappers, but he no longer
Grouses. It's just the season, he says, What
Do I need with a driveway? I read him his
Newspaper; he knows no one in the obits,
So can't track passings of friends, enemies.
Everyone's gone. We hear over from the
Circus that massive oceanic rumble
Of crowd, smell the hickory clouds from
Hog roast pits, corn ears scorched in husk, hear infants
Howling in strollers to match the crowing of
Prize roosters, and, day and night the recurring
Coggy ratcheting of ascending coaster
And the scarlet trill of riders as it falls.
The year has ripened, is gravid and Dad
Says on a night as heavy as this, as
Steamed up, he followed the nasal snarl
Of a barker hawking a tent show on the
Midway: Alive Alive and naked as the
Bible tells us, after her dance of the
Seven Veils, Sally Rand as Salome,
Inside, inside, revealing unblushingly
And wantonly, veil by veil all her
Feminine beauties in all their womanly
Intimacy, Alive Alive revealed
To your eyes. Ed McGrath said, What kind of rubes
Do they take us for? Ed at sixteen too wised
Up, too much the cynic to waste fifty cents,
Or ten good seconds on such a sham. But Dad
Went inside, where shadows blotted all blackly,
In fumes of gin, oiled canvas, pine sawdust
And the flinty stench of farming men and
Business men jammed too close, ravenous,
Mobbed up, closing on the blaring lights up front.
So Dad, tall, even as a teen, shouldered
Through and saw his mistake in timing, a
Lucky one. Because her act was just over and
She was down before them, down sitting on her
Thighs, Salome, with arms across her chest, as
Beautiful as promised, moreso it seemed in
The shock of the moment, nearly naked, yes,
Under the sheets of jade gauze with gold ankle
bracelets, her sad face blue in skewered light,
In her dazzling electric bath, in the white
Violence on the red faces, cowering
In the glare of so much craving. I tell you
Dad says, it was life changing. So I ask him:
Did you tell Ed McGrath? Did you tell him he
Was wrong?
No.
I said he was right, Dad says, I said it was
A sucker's trap, and let him enjoy his cynic's
Desecration of a fraud, as much as I
Enjoyed knowing I had seen my first
miracle.