A poem from my new (draft) book of poems, Brown Studies

Sunday Soldiers

In memory of Jake Adam York, poet

(‘Sunday Soldiers’ was Civil War slang for unsuitable soldiers)

1.We drive from Auburn to Columbus

Sunday march to church

He sits in the back seat and studies

My earmarked copy of Descartes’ Meditations

“What a marvelous book!  I want

To clap my hands after every sentence!”

2. Beside me, working for breath

Is his wife, her head pulled

Toward her feet by Parkinson’s 

Cramping her lungs

Her whole body

Making a fist

Against her will

3. She whispers the Preparation for Confession:

Purity of heart is to will one thing

We pass the site of a Sunday morning 

Flea market, a makeshift booth 

Flies a Confederate flag

He sees it, crosses himself, 

Notices me watching

In the rearview mirror

“It’s the flag of my country!”

4. So it is, although he is not so aged

That he can remember that country,

Yet he commemorates it, venerates it,

Notes often that his country died game

Under the heels of well shod Blue Bellies

5. What am I to say?  He is a saint,

An exemplar–in every way 

But this way

May a saint be a Grey Back,

May he venerate the South, that South,

Without damning himself, 

Rendering his soul shoddy?

6. Driving the car,

Meditating on David—and Bathsheba

On Moses—and the rock

On David contrite, forced to leave

Building the Temple to others,

On Moses abashed, on the mountain

Overlooking the Promised Land

7. Driving the car west

Meditating on North and South

Meditating on right and wrong,

Meditating on vision and blindness

And their confederacy in the heart,

–In his heart, in my heart, in your heart:

We venerate hateful flags, 

We are all Sunday Soldiers