Bully Pulpit

Choir loft (Photo credit: TepeyacFarm)

Does it qualify as bullying
when the one miserying you around
beats from within? Was yours a story
of trying to measure up, trying to
accede to implied expectations,
ones never voiced or illustrated,
where you had to rely upon your own specs,
your own skewed set of measurements?
How many not-good-enoughs to your foot?

Did you get tangled in those hurdles
and those traps you set out to trip
and splat and learn your place?
This congregation of one usually listens
to the loudest one, the guy in the pulpit
pushing me to his way of thinking,
not to the cowed sinner whispering
in the confessional between this pew…
and this.

Up here in the loft I’ve crawled,
where blessed dissonance might
draw attention away from the fearsome
stem-winder in the front of this,
my sanctuary. Here, a new choirist
with familiar face, chants a simple
song of praise giving me more faith in me.
There’s room up here for you, if you
know how to sing your own hosannas, too.