by Gale Acuff
After Sunday School I walk the long mile
home, full of God for another week and
the memory of Miss Hooker to last
just barely that long. I’ll see her again
in seven days, walk to church and it won’t
seem so far as it is coming back. I
love her and want to marry her but she’s
too old, 25 I’d guess, to my 10,
so there’s no hope but a miracle but
one could happen, I mean not by chance but
by God making one deliberately
just for me but it would really be for
us, Miss Hooker and me. I might wake up
tomorrow her age, 25, fifteen
years gone overnight, in my own house, no
Father or Mother to bother me, no
school to go to, and if I have a job
I’ll just call in sick and find Miss Hooker
and take her to the duck pond and propose
and she just couldn’t turn me down and then
we’ll get married the same day and spend our
honeymoon at the Holiday Inn and
have us some babies, she’ll show me how
if God didn’t when He changed me dreaming.
One day we’ll die, maybe at the same time,
and go out in each other’s arms and land
in Heaven, maybe not the next second
but on the Judgment Day, and try to hug
each other and find we’ve got no bodies.
We’ll laugh and laugh. Now I can see our house,
I mean where I live with my parents, and
there’s my dog under the sassafras tree
and soon Mother will be making lunch and
Father will be reading the newspaper
at the kitchen table. I go to church
because they send me, but don’t send themselves,
which is the kind of thing that grown-ups do,
give orders without giving reasons.
Father will ask me how was the sermon
and I’ll say, Righteous, and Mother will ask
what Miss Hooker was wearing today, then
say to the skillet, She knows her colors
but her dresses are too short and tight, and
Father will say, No, no, they suit her fine
– “suit her” – get it? Ha ha ha! I’ll grimace.
I take my seat and say Grace. Then I ask
Father if he believes in miracles.
He’s chewing with his mouth closed, plus we can’t
talk with food in our mouths anyway, it’s
a kind of sin, Mother says. She should know,
she used to be a nurse. Then he swallows
and says, Why not. So I look at Mother
and say, Same question. I’m not sure, she says,
but if there are any, God’s behind them.
Good answer, Father says, You nailed that one.
She blushes. I’m afraid that they might kiss.
After lunch I go play with the dog, which
isn’t easy because he’s very old
and half-blind. He whines but thinks he barks. I
lie beneath the sassafras tree. He drops
beside me. He thinks my head is my feet.
What do you think, I say –do you believe
in miracles? He says nothing, for or
against. That makes good sense. That makes good sense.
Gale Acuff, PhD has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives. Gale has taught university English courses in the US, China, and Palestine.
(And don’t miss Gale’s poem Masters about life, death, and dogs. – Elephants Never)