come unto me...

 
praying among the poppies,
their shocked heads nodding
their lips loose –
they bow their heads and stand skinny in the tallgrass,
with the cicadas snowing their socketed buzz.
daddy prays,
and you can see that vein worming in his forehead,
as if the prayer was bleeding through his pores.

the poppies stifle their laughter,
like sunday school children,
and daddy's jaw grinds
his face red
his sermon lying in pages on the ground next to him
and the bible on a deadwood log,
open to The Acts.

and when he practiced
he flung his arms to heaven
and we hid behind the gray, dead fieldtrees –
pinched and hollow and sifting the song from the wind with its branches.
I chewed grass,
while Ava listened gravely
as daddy screamed damnation
and spat bible verses to a cloudless sky

all the wickered trees would
knit their branches and nod
seeming to agree,
but they have been around for a while...

 
the clouds return when he is finished,
white and satisfied
the organ reeds of the tallgrass strike up
the choir of the cicadas continues
and the wind flips the pages of the bible aimlessly,
as if it where a comic book,
read a thousand times before.

we come out of hiding and bring him his lunch –
cold turkey and rye
as he eats we are silent
and the poppies avoid our stares
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
there is no rest
for the wicked...