Burley and bright

He was complaining before he ever slammed
into the driver’s seat, his hands crinkling

on the tobacco’s pouch, never a fumble
in his routine. I hoped he would start the car up

before he lit it, would let me open my window,
but the outrage was too much. (I used to buy

him pipes, I don’t know if I knew
he would die of the smoke and the drink or if

it was like buying him his own hand, he was so lost
without it. Mom always looked at me, her face

set and old. I thought she grew tired of the shoutiness
of his cough, as if he wanted the world to know these lungs

were in the world, like a shocked baby’s first exclamation)
This time, it was a song that set him off. Before

it was Jack Tripper! Living with two women!
(I can’t know now if he hated more that Jack

played at being gay or if it was the straight threesome. I wish
I had sidled up and asked, but I could lose Gilligan

next, or Joe might lose Dukes of Hazzard and he
wouldn’t forgive that. Or we’d have to say

a fumbling rosary, I always found my fingers
too obsessed with the chain and not able to still

on the beads, even the ones made of petals.
I hate the smell of roses.) Or Newhart. No, I never

understood that either. But this time, it all came down
to a song that Maxine chose, the organist coaxing us up and out

with her stolid play, her firm, sharp soprano, afraid of our
Roman Cacophonism, our sad congregation

with too much decorum and not enough pitch.
Simple Gifts. Quakers. Or Shakers. (But o Lord,

not of moneymakers.) No, this time it was theology,
the infidel claiming God wants us stupid, wants

us like fatalistic porcupines just curled up waiting
for the coyotes, hardly daring to hope.