the atlanta airport
heavy with august heat
was distant from
the cool and often frigid july
i’d spent in england
i’d been at oxford to study
literature for a summer
before my senior year
at alabama

i was a late convert english major
with a lot of catching up to do
but i found my purpose
tintern abbey took
possession of me
in the lake district
far from balliol or the wye
i was transcendent among
hills water mountains
grass almost too green

a midsummer night’s dream
transported me
in stratford
a simple production
scant scenery and props
spoke immortal words
in contemporary dress
the beauty of the bard
broke the boundaries
of my world

i had a lot to think about
struggle with
learn

i was twenty-one
there were girls to pursue
girls with far less clothing than
the frumpy woolen sweaters
worn in england
yet even that could not drown out
the hype of the crimson tide
expecting a big year

i was so alive
my brain exploding with
expectation and possibility
when aunt edie met me at the airport
and told me about the tumor

someone once asked me
if you could be a christian
and vote for a democrat
i answered that i didn’t believe
a true christian could
vote for a republicansomeone else asked me
where i went wrong
saying it was sad that
a good southern boy
raised in a good conservative
christian home could
grow into a dirty liberal
i answered that what
led me to my leftist
leanings came entirely
from what i had learned
in sunday school

this is because
the purported party
of jesus is in truth the party
of the pentateuch and paul
of thou shalt nots and
accusations of abominations
and along the way they’ve
become the party of
mammon and the market
having traded in the
golden rule for an idol
made of gold

but even though this
kind of light is not
to be found in christ
they have come to find
there is no room in the end
for metaphors of camels
and needle’s eyes because
the metaphor of giving all
you have to the poor
is more appropriate
to serve as just
a metaphor one
that nicely illustrates
our current and
compassionate worldview
which also finds comfort
in knowing that
loving your neighbor
is safe to do again now
that we’re in a gated community

all of this is further
evidenced by the hottest
new business model
of the new millennium
where charismatic entrepreneurs
preach the nondenominational
gospel of wealth in their mega
churches of jesus capitalism
selling the party of christ
to their faithful but less
fortunate flocks so that
their fleecing may more
efficiently pad their ledger’s
bottom line and better yet
it’s all tax free as long
as you don’t speak out
against war in iraq

and yet so many
christians still believe
that jesus would have
been a republican

my childhood summers were spent
at my best friend’s lake house
wading swimming
treasure hunting
without goggles
finding pebbles sticks beer cans
and the occasional minnow or bream
in the green netherworld beneath the piersoon our searching grew
first by canoe and then
our ropes were loosened by
a small flat-bottom fishing boat
that carried us through creeks
and woods and ancient dwellings
at the ends of this or that slough

but even more fond
are the memories of the nights
evenings where my friend’s mother
whom i also called mom
would sit with us on the pier
under the light of the stars
and the sometime moon

it was here
that the woman who would
later bring me to poems
thrilled us with her musings
of ghosts and god and ufos
dreams of death angels and
visitations from the recent dead
tickling our imaginations

and while those tales seem almost silly now
it was on that pier
that two stargazing boys
sunburned with icarus wings
first explored the murky depths