Bonnie Thurston
Preachers, poets, your calling
(should you accept it) is
to awaken the child within,
the one at library story hour
who listened entranced
to Miss Cheryl’s fable.
Ditch the dogma,
the inscrutable metaphor.
Tell us the old, old story,
your own story, the one
you hear in your heart
on the darkest night
or in the bright light
of your daughter’s marriage
to a guy you really like.
Recount how scary it all is.
Remind us that, at the end, there will be wedding cake.
