Our Father who art in heaven, who tilts my chin back
and has me swallow love mixed with the daily bread.
Sour grape juice stings my cracked lips,
sitting on old dusty pews where foam is pulled out
by children’s idle hands.
Old church chimes in Chinese an English ring on a
proverbial
Sunday where mingled souls stand adrift in carpet-lined
walls.
White ivory chips click and wooden black keys stick,
voices stretch and pews creak,
A worm eats steadily in my Adam’s apple.
The piano lamp snaps off.
“You may be seated.”
And the sermon, like rain,
patters and sighs on my ear drums,
rolling out in Chinese idioms,
pouring from a gardening man.
And some laugh, some sleep, some play on their phones,
some listen, and some don’t care.
Among them, I conduct careful research,
soaking in scripture,
or sleep, slouched against the hard-back pew,
feeling wood pressed into my spine, unable to sleep.
In the sea I doze off,
snatching intermittent doses of Chinese and English.
I catch the pastor’s face, lit and pleased with his garden.
Two forests snore beside me,
dozing gently, I walk slowly along a dirt path
where trees are lined,
straight and enduring,
my world swathed in green sunlight.
In the kitchen, watery lemonade
sits in a yellow cooler
poised over a white-stained bucket.
In the afternoon, volleyball games
echo inside the cavernous gym.