A crow, legend tells us,
took the poisoned loaf
the jealous subdeacon
had sent to Benedict
and flew it far from
the mouths of those
too hungry to question
so sudden a gift.

Pinched between its beak,
the holy cards imagine,
a Dark Age dinner roll,
a bitter bun marked with
an X and not a cross.

I wonder if that’s right.

Surely, it was bigger
and cruder, a heavy
boule hauled, ash-bottomed,
from the stove’s far back.

Surely, the crow struggled,
thrust back into inelegance,
wings against the draft.
The loaf, talon-clutched,
unsteady in its rising,
an ill omen over Perugia,

Another of our sins aloft
in that uneasy suspension:
forgiven, dispatched, released
but not yet departed.

This article appears in January 6 2020.

Patrick Cunningham is a film director in Los Angeles, Calif. His debut feature, "Anyone Home?" opened in the summer of 2019.