For the Church Ladies Who Always Bring a Covered Dish

reluctant poetry

What outrageous ecstasy
is locked behind those silent lips?

Still hands don’t clap or lift,
but merely tremble in the Presence,
weary from the work.

Straight-backed supplicants,
while rapt, do not cry out;
and sometimes they may sing or smile
but do not keen or shout.

And is this truly worship,
bound so quiet and so tight?
You cannot tell by looking.
You simply take their word.

They simply take their Word.

Author’s note: It was important to me to change this poem’s title, but I found that to do so I had to republish it. It originally appeared under under the title “White Protestant Mainline.”