We trouble deeply after church services,
Struggle to repeat the lost message,
The sermon’s words not it at all,
But something else responding,
Like a half-forgotten classical melody
Dad played on the Victrola.
The pork roast simmers, and children
Wash hands for Sunday dinner, yet
We wait, our thoughts seeking something,
A touch of the immortal, not a reverence
Of place or gods or browned
Potatoes and gravy.
No, there is something there, we hope,
And it’s not our faith,
Not our hope for eternity.
It’s something eternal though, a steely delight in life,
Our hearts pumping, our afternoon
Planned for TV football games.
Like a toothache, it causes the ego to pause
And forget when, exactly, we get up and stumble
Toward the table, the children already
Saying grace.
Wonderful poem. We all stop and think sometimes, at the edge of a lot that we don't understand and we shrink back, to the comfort of the known and loved. You captured that feeling well.
“The woman or man who is a poet, or fiction writer, or playwright, or all of these, is engaged constantly in a jazz ballet of vocabularies, passions, genders, histories, perspectives, death, love, and life. The music of revelation announces itself to
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