Religion

We lived in a quiet house

at the end of a long rocky road in Nashville,

a tender sanctuary where the sounds of

the dog sleeping in the backyard and

the hiss of a burned-out cigarette

went unheard.

I was three years old swinging on the porch

with my great grandfather, a living ancestor,

bones hardened like gunmetal from the war

and blood flooding with nicotine,

but he was my religion-

a smile and a round belly kept me going

higher on that early morning swing.

I can remember four-line hymns,

a tone-deaf old man and a little boy

that sounded like Johnny and June at

the Grand Ole Opry, the only sound for miles.

Every day had that Sunday-after-church feeling,

like a weathered cardigan and a used tobacco pipe

until the clouds melted away into an afternoon painting,

that wild Tennessee sky splattered with watercolors

overlooking the hills, and then

as the sun slipped into the ground

I grew out of that old swing,

but Papa could still lift the moon into the sky,

dot the yard with a million lightning bugs

and sing those old songs as if

the soul of the south could never die.