Refusing to Do Anything
Like a minnow
I can’t decide which school
to travel with. Maybe if I stay still
I’ll make friends with the bay
or ripples circling a water lily.
Most of my life,
six decades of busy.
I’m off to loll inside
a red tulip.
Yes, lolling is an activity.
Contradictions kiss.
A bee buzzes overhead.
I think his name is Death.
I’d
march into my old Bible Church
of Villa Park with my husband
and sit in the front pew
holding hands
as Pastor unpacks several
grocery bags stuffed
with shoulds. The church
sold to another church
and even that church died.
Real estate must give God
a headache. In my youth,
the same forty or so people
came each week, the same
ideas batted back and forth
like a badminton birdie.
What would they have done
to see us together?
Fenced us in with angry words?
Fenced us out with silence?
Church offered candles
and poison. It can no longer
break us. Or get in the last word.
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Kenneth Pobo has ten books and twenty-eight chapbooks published, the most recent being Winbuds from Cyberwit.net. His work has appeared in: Amsterdam Review, The Fiddlehead, Hawaii Review, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Brittle Star, and elsewhere.