Love Richard

There she stood
Surrounded by wooden wheels screeching
Poodle skirts and saddle shoes.

An angel under a spotlight,
With Tommy Roe crooning
To the couples in the corners.

His scuffed loafers whispered
Across the oiled, ash floor,
Sweaty palms creased his chinos,
His lips covered by paper.

Life or death came with the next
Hurried breath,
When he asked her to dance.
A smile, a flip of her dark hair,
And he was able to exhale.

A dance that began very slow,
Much like a train leaving a village at midnight,
Gathering speed, at times
Calm and smooth,
Often switching in an instant,
Running wild,
Nearly leaving its tracks.

And so went the dance,
It netted a smile, a moonlight walk in the sand,
On to a wedding, a few children and a career.
Loved ones leaving them, and a
Small red chested robin perched on her finger.

A dance that has lasted 53 years.
Close to coming to an end many times, but
Blissfully going on.

Despite the years,
She’s still the angel in the center of the floor,
Slowly turning, looking him in the eye,
And whispering “Yes.”.

Cedar Creek and Salvation

The Second Freedom: Worship

Cedar Creek and Salvation

1923.
Hot, damp canvas
And a campfire.
Rocky soil underfoot from an Indiana creek bed.
The hell-fire glare of a Baptist
Revival Preacher wearing a black coat
Despite the Midwestern heat of September.

Perched on a striped cloth
Folding chair,
Dark eyes sizing me up,
He demands my faults lie
Open on the ground for all to see.
His worn boots kick at them
As I cry to the sky that I had led
A good life.

His hooked nose and
Scarred index finger
Single out the past pretense
Of my statement.
Reminding me that I still breathe,
And that I had lived for today not tomorrow.

Angrily, he throws his straw
Hat over his shoulder,
Onto a path to the woods.
A path to righteousness,
A path to life,
And says quietly, Go, and sin no more”.

Copyright Scott Sprunger 2010

No Harvest

An Ohio Blue Tip is flicked to life in a field of uncut wheat.
Cupped by a bulging hand covered in ashen hair,
it’s raised to meet a Lucky and a deep breath.
Smoke lingers,
then dives into the wrinkles brought on by sixty-seven summers.
Eyes of sapphire stare out across the field,
fixed on a clump of maples near the west road.

Those eyes.
America’s eyes.
His eyes.

His eyes have felt the sting of sweat
and the cutting edge of the harrow’s reins
as two nags led him across the earth.
His eyes have worried through framed glass,
darkness,
hail dancing on the tin roof.
His eyes wept under a September sun
as his son’s blood drained into the grass
from beneath an overturned John Deere.
His eyes laughed when Old Roy sprouted
quills from the end of his snout.
His eyes questioned the skies
when they brought no rain and the dirt rose like a ghost and flew away.
His eyes turned bitter when fields of towering corn were crushed
beneath the pavement of a new shopping mall.
His eyes choked for breath when a pink slip from the auditor
shoved them into the red.
His eyes trembled as a man in a gray suit
beat an auction sign into the yard using his worn shovel.
His eyes dimmed as friends and strangers roamed his farm looking for treasures.

His eyes died
as he cast away the Lucky
into a field of uncut wheat,
turned and crept back to his home
within the city limits.

copyright 2010 Scott Sprunger