Small-Town Scourge
9.19.06

Lye-soap stares
when they forget their manners
are meant to purge him of his sins
committed in the adulterous dusk of suspicion.

Her kindness was a surgeon’s knife,
piercing far below an integumentary sort of propriety.
She scored too fresh, delved too deep,
but the price isn’t paid in blood.

Sure, he’s preaching from a piney pulpit,
one that sears across his chest each Sunday
as his heart echoes the aching fervor
hand-wrapped in the morning message, but
it’s never lasted long.

He wasn’t blueprinted into stone, each tenth
rumbling through a commandment, nor did
some ancient and implacable god reach down
with flaming tongues and holy winds
to repay some inspired coin borrowed at birth.

Loosening this neck-tie seems
a bit pre-emptive, but those seven steps between him
and the pitchforked pews
seem a fair head-start.