Those Who Worship

[TranquillityBase]

Those Who Worship


There was a devout 
swaying when dad 
strode down the doorstep, 
as if god had coughed 
sanctity into 
the bow of the breeze 
and the creak 
of the threshold 
like a bloody tooth 
into a latex glove. 
My face glittered like 


a sack of opaque gems
as dad descend onto 
the pond-black road 
in the thin red coat 
he wore like skin. 
When his car rubbed its 
final puff of cigarette 
ash into the air,                     I don't understand what's happening in these lines.....


I leaned on the boards 
of the barnyard 
pen, squatting next 
to the chickens and hogs 
and unholiness. I was 
nine years old then and
I hadn’t yet learned that


there is a kind of 
innocence gods steal 
from those who
worship. As dad 
clattered away, 
swimming like a goldfish 
towards the luster 
of the sun’s golden rim,
I shut my eyes in prayer.

Welcome Sapphire,

Just the one note on lines in second stanza which puzzle me.  I'm also not sure where it is the father is clattering away to (church?), but that doesn't really bother me.  The rest of the poem is clear to me.  I like the spareness of the poem.

TqB