As I Drive Over an Irrigation Ditch at the End of Summer, I Think of a Small-Town American Preacher.(Poem)

 
As I Drive Over an Irrigation Ditch at the End of Summer, I Think of a 
Small-Town American Preacher 
 
Carolyne Wright 
 
(with apologies to James Wright) 
 
           Where is the sea, that once 
           solved the whole loneliness 
           of the Midwest? 
                  Written A.D. 1960 
 
Preacher Bob, half-cracked old trouble-maker, 
what's the point? 
I think of you, 
unsteady, hoisting the Good Book aloft 
on the brown lawns of Mid-America State U. 
while you're being dragged by your hanks 
heavenward like a sinner 
in the hands of a pissed-off god. 
You'll make it, I guess, 
by millennium's end. 
 
But it is 1999, it is almost the season 
for Y2K, and the backyard …