Deliverance

I like this poem if only because it hearkens back to my childhood.  For my first fifteen years or so, we trudged to church three days a week. 

We , my very young parents, my brother, and I, lived in a trailer on what is now the runway at St. Louis Lambert Airfield in northwest St. Louis County.  The Tip Top Trailer Court.  

Given there were no highwaysm we woke early and drove to South Side Assembly of God on the far south side of St. Louis on Grand Avenue.  There my brother an I sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children” with Sister Trendle.  She led Sunday School for kids,.  She bore a purple birthmark that covered most of her face.  No matter how sweet her voice, her purple skin gave me the creeps.  

Later, we joined the adults upstairs for the service.  It was a dank, cavernous room whose boards creaked and angled towards the pulpit.  And before, we greeted adults in ways that I don’t think children do now.  

Andy Keenan had served early in Vietnam and his pinky finger and ring finger of his right hand had been shot off.  He vigorously shook my hand as if to say, “I am here, and losing two fingers in battle is part of he plan.”  

One of the Pickeral twins was wearing a football helmet because his brother locked him in the dryer and turned it on.  Everyone wore a tie.

Sister Giacoletto, a fallen Roman Catholic and recent convert to charismatic principles, brought us a loaf of her crispy Italian bread and apple butter from her backyard tree.

These were a people who possessed deep belief.  They prayed for the sick and dying.    They wept and spoke in tongues.  And afterwards, they felt forgiven, lighter.  I’ve no certainty of what they were experiencing, but it was sincere.  Many people I know might have been frightened and imagined that witch burning would begin after services.

But for me, this was a commonplace.  

There I first flirted with eternity.  Hell? Forever.  Remembering my throbbing thumb that I burned on our stove, I imagined pain today, tonight, the next day, and for a moment, I had a grasp of forever.  

And heaven?  It didn’t seem appealing to me either.  “Streets paved with gold?”  What would I spend it on?  Heaven for me might have been a tree house (we had no tree), a banana split, or holding hands with Michelle and Renee, our heartthrobs next door.

God, while powerful, seemed to lead a dull existence.

After singing “The Old Rugged Cross,” our stomachs gnawed for food.  Dad would discretely slip us gum, Juicy Fruit if we were lucky, Dentyne if not.  The worst was Sen Sen, the bitter licorice flavor.

I prayed that this was over.  Hungry.  Restless.  Please let me walk about.

Oh, had a pigeon flown loose through the congregation to deliver me.

Holy Ghost

The congregation sang off key.
The priest was rambling.
The paint was peeling in the Sacristy.

A wayward pigeon, trapped in the church,
flew wildly around for a while and then
flew toward a stained glass window,

but it didn't look like reality.

The ushers yawned, the dollar bills
drifted lazily out of the collection baskets
and a child in the front row began to cry.

Suddenly, the pigeon flew down low,
swooping over the heads of the faithful
like the Holy Ghost descending at Pentecost

Everyone took it to be a sign,
Everyone wants so badly to believe.
You can survive anything if you know
that someone is looking out for you,

but the sky outside the stained glass window,
doesn't it look like home?