The First Chords of a Folk Song

 The First Chords of a Folk Song

(“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1)

It was time to get serious again about all the subjects
that kept us in line. The law, the rules, the injunctions,
the tools, the courtrooms, the judges, the preachers so used
to fudging the tightest belt out of the most
ill-fitting passages they could find.
It was time to unwind the heresy that anyone
could be happy
simply tasting the rain on their tongue
or
dancing like a toddler with no one in particular.

For a while their lecture halls were full,
for some time the students took notes in bluebooks,
transferred them to laptops and cleaned up
the illegible handwriting that had made them miss lunch
dates
with too many friends.
For a while the pseudo-prophets prospered.
No one doubted their word. Not one. And those who did,
(we all knew who they were), those who did were treated
like outcasts and backsliders, though most of us believed they
never belonged in the first place.

After a while the acrid smoke blemished the best presentations,
after a while the manufactured scents caused women to cry,
after a while the flags that waved, the allegiances pledged,
lost their luster when everything was a battle,
and no one could escape the arrows’ gleaming light.
The doors were heavy as lead and the post trauma songs
only sent true believers home.

And then, like fireworks on New Year’s Eve,
a toddler spun at the edge of the campground,
a puppy danced in the campfire reflection,
a mother cried who had never cried before,
and hugged her baby who (she knew) had escaped
the death that had been peddled in pamphlets
passed out by preachers and their proteges. A mother
who had insisted the pamphlets were literal and inerrant,
a mother who had never missed a class before.

And then like nothing ever described,
the dawn broke; water, sun, and sky met at the east end
of the river. There had been baptisms, there had been ablutions;
but now it all was oceans that kept the dance going, that
kept showing the songs that opened like the first chords of
a folk song no one had ever heard and
that everyone knew.