Outside the Church

Old man
I see every day
of the week,
one of the stinky ones
I always try to avoid, is
tapping his toes
on the sidewalk outside
Sunday service at
the Main Street
Baptist Church,

and saying to me
as I try
to hurry by:

"I ain’t no
Christian — not no
more, not since I was
a little kid — but
some one of those singers in there
sure figured out a way
into something I never heard about
back when, back when
I was a kid…"

and he’s right, so right

that when he doesn’t even
hit me up
for change

I put a jumble of silver
into his hands
anyway.