Poem: Tongues

This is the seventh poem in my recently released book Dirt Girl. You can find the entire collection on Amazon here, or find the audiobook on Chirp here.

the church people speak in tongues

while I speak in poems

oh father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name

we sang in unison the morning after the towers went down

held hands so tight our knuckles turned white

thy kingdom come thy will be done

on Earth as it is in heaven

but Mother Earth never bruised us so deeply

never made us so sad all at once

and the minister says

give us this day our daily bread

and forgive us our sins,

as we forgive those who sin against us

I didn’t understand what it meant to forgive

barely understood what it meant to live

twenty years later I found the words I wrote

in my young diary, “Why would God hurt us so badly?”

lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

a man on the local news channel said