Hymnbooks Poems | Examples

Sly Boys

The sparsity of congregants
reminds me of the absence 
of jestful boys schooled 
in the faux arts
of throwing hymnbooks
across the nave.

The smelters ran two shifts, 
fed us beattitudes
of paid mortgages 
and Sunday roast beef
as the school teemed every year
with five-year-olds.

Sidewalks buckle
atop the roots of oak canopies,
as the breath of traffic
grows sparer;
the psalms of our minister grow fainter.

In the tart air of early Spring
those sly boys
would cup a book in a palm
and pretend to launch it,
to the mortification of their mothers.