Bruised Hymnal
By Doug Ramspeck

............................The day was bruised and parched.
..And the lark sparrows—mottled as memory—
flocked at the edges of the soybean field.
................It was the river near Old State Route 7,
shrunken with drought, carrying
its withered beauty in decaying, sluggish green.
........................................................ Like grief.
Slow and muscular, a milk snake swallowing a mouse.
The hard hot mornings. The gray light, before dawn,
..................smudged and abstract above our apple trees.
While in the distance the school bus
was lifting dust. And the morning air was like
..bv..................organ music drifting amid the rafters
of a church, or the feeling of a bruised hymnal
clutched each Sunday in our fingers.

Back to Contents