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Old church
Hard-backed oak pew
10:54 a.m.
Strains of music
Swell from
Far back
Within the choir
Room, sweeping into the
Sanctuary
Practice
Waiting
To enter the
House of God and sing His
Hymns—I can't sing
These songs
Like I
Could when I was
Young, when all was faith; now
Poetry is
My hymn
Language
My religion
And my gods have strange names:
Byron, Shelley
Milton
Shakespeare
Auden, Whitman
Their church nothing more than
A book, black ink
White page
No pews
No preachers, choirs
Not even a dress code:
And I think as
I sit
Hearing
The music grow
Seeing the choir enter
God speaks to me
In poems
Not hymns
Yet here I am
11:10 a.m.
The first hymn plays
I sing
I sing
Because I made a pact
With God: He lets me write
And sometimes I
Sing hymns.
© 1996 by J. M. Pressley