Perhaps the body of Christ

is this entire world: factories in the Rust Belt, churches in the Bible Belt, the Sierra Nevada, West Indian Manatees, solar panels, every Toyota Solara, a 1961 Impala abandoned in a farmer’s pasture, fishing ships filled with mackerel, children singing, “Row, row, row your boat” in a dusty playground, the bones of Genghis Khan resting beneath blue Mongolian skies, the simmering chicken soup on grandma’s stove, righteous violet bougainvillea, the holy mud of the pig sty, forks of lightning, dinner forks, forks in the road at dusk, slash pine, pecan pie, humming refrigerators, linoleum floors, space heaters, water moccasins, leather moccasins, melting permafrost, Three Wise Men, Budweiser beer, outhouse lime, key lime, limestone beneath the entire state of Florida, oak toads, toadstools, overnight mushrooms, moonflowers, barns full of rotting grain, St. Augustine, St. Augustine grass, masturbation, a stolen pear, the bees fleeing the rotten pear, Rome, Alexandria, Damascus, Ephesus, Athens, Truth or Consequences, Monterey, Ottawa, Wagina, Kissimmee, the True Cross, crossroads, voodoo dolls, altars, rosaries, Ave Maria, zombies, French roast, Notre Dame, Waterloo, Tierra del Fuego — yes, the body of Christ is even 

the land of fire at the very end of a continent. Praise Captain Cook and the voyage of the Endeavor past Cape Horn in 1769! Praise the discovery of Paradise in 1770, where the naturalist Joseph Banks explored the bodies of many Tahitian maidens! Perhaps the body of Christ was the breadfruit that those English sailors ate after communing with brown-skinned beauties? And that fruit lingers till this day on South Pacific shores, the body of Christ blooming in male and female flowers on the same tree.