Small Acts

We waited in lines outside the Orpheum
at the grocery store, in hot carnival dust.
We gathered pennies in a jar against hunger,
slipped slim dimes in cardboard cards,
stacked cans in thanksgiving baskets.
We saved cereal boxtops, milk cartons.
collected bottle caps, glued green stamps
in their green books the way our mothers taught us,
the way they saved string before we were born,
knotting odd pieces they wound to make a ball.

Is this the way we come to belief,
in small acts and fractions, the way
navigators make an increment of correction
to set a new course.

We waited in line for a chance
at one thing that might bring grace:
a saint's shriveled hand in a crystal coffin,
the prize in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box.