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Recourse

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in that little church in Canada
there is a bullet hole in the pulpit.
isn’t it romantic?

where the grass was a sea,
the pirates’ code of lawlessness
was defined by their guns

if one didn’t know better
the story might read
“preacher warned, intimately.”

but we do know
and the truth, as usual
is more bleak, less kind

the old pulpit,
built when preachers, like everyone else
had different tools in their hands

was set aside for something smooth,
modern, a less care-worn surface
for words to slide

the cast-off being big enough to target
and small enough to move,
someone’s son used it to aim his new arm.

with only one hole
he obviously needed the practice
and what’s a pulpit for anyway?

the soldiers stand outside the Church of the Nativity
promising, at best, exile
to their enemies inside

leaving three faiths believing with certainty
the others are bent
on their destruction

the righteous live across the righteous
dragging the indignation of their history
into something more sacred than holy

and if not these faiths, another two or three
a wetter place, a colder day, another practicing saint
creating the lines of Man, citing God

they reclaimed the old pulpit
in the little church in Canada
smoothed time’s tracks, but did not fill the hole

the truth being, of course
one bullet hole in an old pulpit
is little recourse, all in all

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