SUNDAY MORNING IN ANOTHER TOWN

Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Winter 2006 by Poloskey, Marianne

When you were four or five

your father took you along to another town

where he was to conduct the Sunday service.

Never having been away from home,

you were eager for the world

yet apprehensive, wondering whether

each town had its own sky.

As you rode in the black car, reassured by

your father's big hands on the wheel,

the countryside kept changing:

Fields, then trees - single trees

and clumps of trees,

some plump, some slender,

trees lining the road like guards

or running across meadows into woods so dark

a small boy could easily get lost.

Once houses sprang up again, you were relieved

that the sky had not torn or even sagged.

Your father parked by a white church

whose doors stood invitingly open

and walked in alone while you

sat down with the sun on the warm steps.

The congregation sang in that ponderous way

in which Hungarians always sang hymns,

so slow it made you impatient,

but then your father began his sermon

and his words poured out smoothly

like a stream flowing along,

skipping stones and cleaning them

all at the same time.

MARIANNE POLOSKEY

Marianne Poloskey's poetry appears in Potomac Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, North American Review, and Christian Science Monitor, as well as the anthologies Red, White, and Blues, and American Diaspora. She has written book reviews for Valparaiso Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, and Rattle. Her first collection is Climbing the Shadows.