winter triptych for an NC roadway church
I can hear, on too-warm days like this, old ladies sing their praises. Of the sun, the glorious weather. That minor Southern mode of glory. A lightly cursed and consecrated smalltalk. Glory be. Glory land. They’ll take the winter with them when they go.
[center panel]
I lived here so long. Highway to highway, beneath a bright and vacant blue. Here, a church sign claims that NOAH PREACHED / GOD WILL JUDGE. Muddled reference to Peter, who wrote a long list of God protecting his faithful. And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness. All this saving without salvage, I come to think, is what I can’t abide. Allurements of survival only seem to hasten ruin. Deliverances begging for disasters. For miles, whitetail lie dismembered up and down the road.
[right panel]
I return to the North. What once was winter. Dead whales wash ashore. When that god last wrecked the world, at least he had the decency to spare the fish. Now nine, now ten. Mammals, rather. Dark and glistening like enormous livers coughed up from the deep.
ben tapeworm