Sunday, September 18, 2022

Things We Don't Do

 by Brett Rutherford

Go to church?
We don't do that.
No money to give;
nice clothes, never.
Father an atheist,
Mother afraid
of the taunts
of the church ladies
about her family,
the things they did
in that shack in the woods
when men came calling.

One summer they let
a church put on
some Bible classes
at the schoolhouse.
I was sent. Bright books
of Bible stories laid forth
Old Testament and New.
I asked too many
questions, mostly about
dinosaurs and other planets.
They sent me home,
asked that I not
come back again, ever.

Things we don't do
include bicycles,
new shoes, clothes
from a big store,
and Boy Scouts
because all that
took money.

I found a copy
of the Boy Scout manual.
Cover to cover I studied it,
envied the boys
those tent nights
and knot-tying skills.

Nowhere was where
we went all summer.
Once a museum
glimpsed from the car;
once or twice
a beautiful house
blurred in passing.
Ten aunts and uncles
never visited,
cousins unmet.

I did possess
a chemistry set,
with not much left
of its supplies.
In the dark cellar
I did my best
to create monsters.

At school,
it was assumed,
as I soared in reading,
that I must come
from the finest family,
that wealth surrounded
a seven-year-old
already reading
Faust and Hamlet.

It was my game
to let them think it so.


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