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Working on the Sermon
Dave Morrison

She had been lazily digging
in a barren mine, but worse
than not excavating anything
of value was the nagging thought
that her congregation was
trapped down there and she
couldn’t save them. Or, worse,
that they’d already found
their way out and didn’t
need her.
She had so loved the idea of
having her own church, even
a small out-of-the-way one
like this. A quiet, purposeful
life, to be a source of wisdom
and inspiration.
To be needed.
To be loved without being touched.
To live simply, away from the
noise and nonsense, away from
the grinding and accumulating
and pretending to like it.
The thought of saving others had
saved her, but what if it didn’t
matter, what if she no longer
believed in her calling, what if
her congregation came out of
habit, came for the coffee,
came to see what the neighbors
were wearing? What if one pastor
was the same as the next?
God was still calling to her, right?
That voice was God, right?
She needed the coffee, she needed
a different pen, she needed to
know that she had not been
wrong, or that it wasn’t a
deal-breaker.

—
Hailed as “a hearty weed in the garden of American poetry”, Dave Morrison’s poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies, and featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Take Heart, and Poems from Here. Morrison has published sixteen books of poetry including Clubland, poems about rock & roll bars in verse and meter (Fighting Cock Press, 2011), and Cancer Poems (JukeBooks, 2015). His most recent collection is A Murder of Crows Descended, Displacing an Exultation of Larks (Soul Finger Press, 2021). After years of playing in rock bands in Boston and NYC, Morrison now lives on the coast of Maine.

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