A Hypothetical Reunion with Pastor Greeley
Found
The airport air smells like fresh fruit
as he smiles from the luggage claim,
the first unstale moment
we’ve shared in years.
“So how are you?” he jitters, and
part of me misses his voice
though never his words.
As we shake hands his firm grip hoists me
from adulthood and thrusts me back into the
childhood he destroyed.
And though I know my body’s standing outside GATE C3,
my mind suddenly is back inside the
Westfield chirstian Alliance Church, trapped in pews,
consuming grammatically incorrect sermons,
their false pretenses and idle threats.
How the pastor captivated me
when I sat before him in 8th grade–
a boy lost in sin, listening
and trying to believe.
How valiantly adults do try
to shackle their children’s
hearts and minds and futures
to a faith that has none of the above.
My suitcase tumbles off the conveyor belt,
jostling me back to the reality I’ve learned to live in
where bad ideas annex good people and
dumb laws beg to be amended,
and where, sometimes,
the people we need to believe in
are the ones who shouldn’t be trusted.
We pass through the sliding doors and I notice
how the pastor’s strut seems ever human now,
like Jesus was.
He tosses me his keys and I open the passenger side door and I see
his bible
on the dashboard, looking as empty
as empty as the bag of Lays potato chips crumpled on the floor below it.
How sad, I think, that he wastes so much of himself
on something so out of his control; that he gives so much power to
the mightiest of all human fears, yet
elects as his only remedy
one book.
Behind me the trunk slams shut, the
pastor climbs in and starts his engine;
then, for old time’s sake, asks
have I Found god?
I roll the window down,
noting how I miss cars without power locks,
look at the rain, assembling
droplets on the windshield, resembling
so many tears.
And once the pastor realizes
I’m pretending I didn’t hear his question,
he pretends he never asked it–
for both of us. For neither of us
wants me to tell him
all the things I have Found
since calling off the search.
–by M. Frederick Voorhees
