If you have them, your day will overflow
with options; you can reexamine
everything that smells of dogma
or the forbidden, tip your hat
to the great poem that is the body,
maybe even uphold the beautiful
by renouncing the pretty.
Prepare to be in trouble on holidays,
which are holy days for others, but for you
are days off, a chance to exercise
your pleasures, perhaps speculate why prayer
never seems to reach its destination.
Tell your churchgoing friends
that you're more like a justice of the peace
than a witch or a warlock, someone trying-
with the help of the best that's been written
and said, and without aid from the cloudy above-
to divine what's evil, investigate what's good,
attempt to live in a world a person from
another world might want to muck around in,
raise children, guide them to discover
for themselves what it means to be a citizen.
Stephen Dunn
