Such Good Results

A chilly mist hung in the air that Sunday morning in April when I pulled up in front of Harpers Grove Community Church. The gravel parking lot was rapidly filling up, and folks, nodding cordially to each other, were threading their way through neat rows of parked cars. Several young men, lingering over a last cigarette, checked out the strange car with the out-of-state license plate. When the last one ground out his smoke beneath new wingtips and disappeared into the vestibule, I stepped out of my car to get a better look at the churchyard. It was much as I remembered it. The giant oak still towered precariously over the narthex. The mulberry bushes and hedging were sprouting seasonally, and faded daffodils clung to overgrown stalks. An atmosphere of unkemptness pervaded the place, but I couldn't quite determine what made it seem so. The sloped slate roof obviously needed attention. The old whitewashed privies had disappeared, and, in some previous year, an educational wing had been tacked onto the rear of the frame building, brick and businesslike. Essentially, however, it was the same church house I had come to from the day I was born until our family moved away during my first year in high school. EIGHTH PLACE WINNER September 21, 2022 Submitted to "Chapter 1 Poetry Contest" Sponsored by Matt Caliri