Stories, cont'd

selected shorts subject

The cold season in Wisconsin sets in once more,
and still I wear my tattered gray short pants
around

the house and surround where my home office is,
though I know sartorially no great credit to me these bare threads
redound.

The hems dangle down. You say time has made my abbreviated trousers
unpresentable; yes, by some standards I am poorly
gowned.

Just this very day a squad car passed while I in my shorts
raked leaves into a mound. The cops spied my special drawers and
frowned.

But I don't seem to give a darn or a big rodent's posterior anymore,
if ever I did, how my own unpublicized posterior is clad. Perhaps I shed or add
a pound

now and then, but my shredded fading sheath is a forgiving shroud;
the waist is elastic, a yet strongly expanding and contracting heart. So
hound

me if you will, washing after ragging washing, I just cling to
these pants the more, and they to me; I know how couthless that may
sound.

There may be a Lack of Fashion Statement in such die-hard loin clothing
but I don't intend to make it:

I too am fraying, but my pants and I, together, will hold our dear
ground.

Steady improvements

News item:

The Waukesha Congregational Church UCC is going back to the in-storage glass communion cups. We salute the worship committee, Along with the pending huge undertaking of the roof replacement and the tuck-pointing already completed following a successful capital fund campaign, the return to the old real glass communion cups is yet another restoration of former greatness. A seemingly small thing, but meaningful to old us as this dated ode attests:

You Call That a Glass a Wine?

A hell of a way to run a railroad

While the Episcopalians swill real communion wine

From a common metal cup, the rim of which is

Merely swiped lightly with a cloth between hearty gulps

Of the blood of Christ,

A block away at the Congregational Church

They’ve gone from glass to plastic thimbles that are disposable

After each hummingbird half-filling of Juicy Juice; and why?

Because one can never be sure;

Were they washed well enough between once-a-month

Eucharists? Germs, oh nastiful nasties, fie upon them;

Although a good Christian willfully eats his allotted bucket of dirt

A year, and breathes noxious fumes all ‘round,

At the Congregational Church

He can control at least something, and it’s

The type of mini-vessel

From which he tiddles his teensy taste,

His weensy taste of sugary “blood”;

But I’ll tell you one thing;

Those plastic vials will never clink

The way real glass did in the communion racks!

You cannot slam down a plastic thimble

Nor can you cherish the feel of it in your fingers;

It just aint the same; and brother,

It’s not the way we used to do it.

It is just a good thing, probably,

The heavenly monitors, if they be,

Couldn’t care less what form

Our worship takes, as long as it’s sincere,

And resonant, if ecologically unsound.

[David Dix, 02-03-04]