Questions for the Missionaries
after all, but only after the missionary boys pedaled away—white shirts and blue back packs glistening like wet sea shells—only then did I think of the questions to ask. Can you hang a theology from the beak of a pileated woodpecker, so rarely seen, at the moment it vanishes from view, always about to be elsewhere? Those five or ten minutes on certain mornings when the angle of the sun is exactly right and clouds flame into molten pink and orange, can you press those five or ten minutes into a medallion to wear around my neck? The amber film coating the sides of a half-drunk glass of single-malt scotch or the mole on my wife’s back, can you print those on an inspirational bumper sticker? The shadow of a trout shooting for cover under a wedge of rock or the trap door that opened in my stomach the first time my Ohio eyes saw mountains, can you cut and solder those moments into a stained glass window? Can you manage to mount even one of those on an altar, rather than this bloody intersection of two sticks? If so, I might, just might, see my way to kneel before it from time to time. __________ Home / Escapee / Stories / Poems / Non-fiction / Contact / Links |