Lake Asbury Methodist Church Camp

for Maj Ragain

I followed Reverend Brewster 

around camp, asking

about God, he smiled 

and sent me

off to crafts. We’ll talk,

he said, but when 

on the last day

I was distraught that I

hadn’t caught a fish,

he took me fishing

in the rain.

I understand now:

we are fishers of fish– 

not fishers of men.

I want Wallace Stevens’s

Sunday morning, scent 

of oranges, moods 

in snow, dance

of pagans in some primordial

dream. I heard 

a pipe organ lover

traveled west

to buy pipes.

They were too big

for the car, so he

strapped them to the roof,

and through many states,

let the wind

play them home.

This poem was riginally published in “The Compost Reader” (Accents Publishing).