Poetry Gong - Poem 2

Still stuck on the impression the armless, legless evangelist made on me. Can't get to the "meat" of it...


Bible as Playbook


"I'm not living on my own strength. I'm basically walking on water.”
- Nick Vujicic


It was a sunny Sunday in October,
warmer than it should be, not hot
as hell or the equator, but stifling
still. Why worry, the pastor preached.
Trust
in the Lord
Delight
in the Lord
Commit
everything to the Lord.
Three loaded verbs.

I was contemplating action
words when I should have been singing.
Bowing to the muse
when I should have been lowing
like the rest of the flock.

Ever Sunday he throws us a challenge.
Fevered coach, former all-star posing as pator,
passing pigskin to folding chair quarterbacks.
Few plays are made. Little touches
down. The game goes on.

Busier than a one-armed paper-hanger, my father used to say.
I always pictured my mother, ash blonde held back
in a red bandana, wrestling with angels
and rainbows on the sloped ceilings of my bedroom.

We all suffer. It’s hot in church.
There’s no I in pray,
or is it team?
And who is meant to suffer more,
tell me preacher, when you toss
the limbless evangelist up on the wide screen.
This man is happy,
you scream, but it wasn’t always so.

Preacher, throw the final pass.
Tell us the man with no arms and legs
trusted no-one, delighted in trying to commit
suicide at age eight. I am the sheep slipped astray,
singing, not wow, but how?