Upright
by Gale Acuff
After Sunday School today I walked home
as usual but it wasn’t really
because I got saved, at least I think so,
or maybe only thinking so isn’t
good enough but I’m only ten years old
—what do I know even if I know it?
Miss Hooker was pounding the old upright
and leading us in “Onward, Christian
Soldiers” and I got carried away—I
want to be a soldier when I grow up
and face the enemy and kill him if
it comes to that, or them, and earn medals
to prove it and my folks won’t let me be
in Cub Scouts but when I’m of age, is it
18, I’ll join for a hitch, the army
I mean, and work my way to General
and later maybe be the President
and probably get assassinated
but what price glory? That’s the way it goes
even if it shouldn’t but maybe things
go the way they go because folks make them
and not God, I mean He doesn’t make things
go the way they go, people do and blame
a bad direction on Him and Jesus.
Anyway, the front door of our classroom,
one of our new portable buildings at
church, kind of like a Quonset, our classroom
I mean, was open and I marched right out
onto the two-by-four and plywood porch
and down the double two-by-four steps and
around the building and then back inside
right where the end of the line of classmates
was marching, the Cross of Jesus going
on before, and I don’t think anyone
missed me. If that’s not saved I don’t know what
is. After we said the Lord’s Prayer and
shouted Amen like it was Ten-Hut! I
stalked up to Miss Hooker, I didn’t march
because I was a civilian again,
and saluted her. She said, As you were
and anyway you’re out of uniform
and laughed and then I laughed and then she said
Enjoy your one-week pass and I’ll see you
in camp again next week. Yes ma’am, I said,
and headed home. The place that I’ll die for.
“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.