by Gale Acuff

In Sunday School today Miss Hooker told
the one about Moses parting the Red
Sea, in half he did it, so his people
could hurry over before the Pharaoh’s
charioteers could catch up to them and
slay them. That means kill. I wish I’d been there
to see all that. I wish I could’ve been
a fish high up in one of those halves and
wondering if I’d become a bird as
I looked down on the proceedings until
those folks made it safely to the other

side, Moses maybe the last like a good
shepherd, then raising his rod high to make
the waters fall into the Sea again,
drowning all those soldiers and horses and
waterlogging their chariots. Then I’d
splash down pretty hard, I guess. I’d hope
to swim again to talk about it, not that
fish can talk but to other fish maybe,
or to their small fry. Then it was time to
go so Miss Hooker called on me to lead

the class in the Lord’s Prayer. I stood up
and bowed my head and closed my eyes
and prayed it like I meant it, as if I
was Jesus myself, if it’s not a sin
to say so, and when I came to Amen
my classmates and Miss Hooker and I said
it all together as one big shout. Then
I opened my eyes and sat down to hear
her dismiss us with God bless you, children,
have a good week, I’ll see you next Sunday,
but I was last to leave because I love

Miss Hooker and if I was Adam she’d
be my Eve—if that’s not love I don’t know
what is, the marrying kind anyway.
Yes, Gale—do you have a question, she asked.
Yes ma’am, I said. Superman can travel
back through time but can’t change history is
what my comic books teach me but it would
be keen if he could so he could go back
and stop Adam and Eve from eating that
apple. If I was Superman I’d try
it anyway. She took off her glasses

and held them up to the light through the door
and then over to the window, then took
a tissue out of her pocketbook and
rubbed and rubbed the lenses and then put them
back on and reminded me of Clark Kent
and how Lois Lane can’t tell he’s really
Superman even though they share the same
face, I mean Clark and Superman, not Clark
and Lois. That’s literature for you
—sometimes it’s as screwy as religion.
Well, she said, I guess that would be keen but
history always moves forward and that’s

why we have the past, it gets left behind,
sort of like a road you’re driving over
except that you can never drive back, God
doesn’t give you a Reverse, only Drive,
and though you can look over your shoulder
at where you’ve been, or recall it, you can’t
go back. She took her glasses back off and
smiled. Oh, I said. Yes ma’am—it’s just pretend
to go back in time. Yes, I’m afraid so,
she said. Then she stood and gathered up her

pocketbook and Bible. You may walk me
to my car, she said. Yes ma’am, I said, and
as we walked out the door I didn’t look
back because all that past was gone even
though I’ll see something like here next week,
in the future that is, and when I’m there
in the room then it will be the present.
So the only way to visit the past
is to return and that means the future
which is the present while you’re in between

the two. I wonder why God made it so.
I opened Miss Hooker’s door for her
and she got in and I shut her door, hard,
like our Amen. She started her engine
and waved goodbye and I waved and she drove
out of the church parking lot and that was
the future where she was going and I’m
the past she left for later and even
if she’d turned around and come back to say
something she forgot—I love you, maybe
—and I was still standing here, we would both
be older. Sometimes I’d like to be born

older, even dead, and then grow younger
and expire on the day I was born, just
for laughs, maybe. I’d be living backwards
but if Adam and Eve were our parents
then I might die all the way back to them.
Adam would be about to take a bite
and maybe I could stop him that way, by
being one atom of obedience
in his brain. Or maybe stop at Moses
and think a little harder about how
to get the Israelites across and
save those horses. Oh, yeah: the soldiers, too.

“I suppose that each [poem] is a kind of narrative-rhetorical study, of a boy who somewhat unconsciously deconstructs the adult world of religion, at least in his community. We all inherit what we become, in a way; this is perhaps the nexus of self-insight.” —Gale Acuff

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in fourteen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and in Palestine, where he teaches at Arab American University.

Time Travel

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