Two more poems from BJ Omanson's Stark County Poems-- "The Aging Widow in the Third Pew" and "Populism" (both situated in the late 19th century in Stark County, Illinois)-- appear in the current issue of Illinois Heritage: a Publication of the Illinois State Historical Society.
The Aging Widow in the Third Pew
Her faith
had little to do with church
and even
less with the long succession
of
ministers who had come and gone
since she
was a child. It had to do
with the
wind from which there was no relief,
that
carried the rain and gave teeth to drought
and tore
the roof from the barn and haunted
her nights
with wailing. It had to do
with the
cooling summer breezes that turned
the pages
of scripture without a touch
and
caressed away the sweat of her brow.
That the
seen is shaped by an unseen force
was
something she never thought to doubt.
In church,
when she was told in the Psalm
to lift
up thine eyes, and she turned to see
through the
open window a falling leaf
suspended a
moment, then lifted away
on the
wind, the tears welled up in her eyes
and she
picked up her purse and slipped away
through the
basement door and out on the grass
and lifted
her face to the cloudless sky.
