They’re setting up the big tent
for the revival this weekend
in backroad Kentucky
where my work occasionally takes me,
those beautiful tree-lined byways 
that turn this way and that,
drop down to run beside 
crystal flowing creek beds,
and halve the furred fields 
where the sheaves are bound 
and drying beneath the sun. 

They’ll be sweating
beneath that wedding white canvas,
a scorcher of a June day predicted,
ideal conditions 
for a fire and brimstone message —
I suppose that’ll be okay
with the true blue believers
who traveled so far on faith
to be there. They’ll frighten the dark
out of the night
with their amens and hallelujahs.

The state of the world today,
my mother wasting away,
my faith in the big G god
is weaker than the lemonade
the parishioners will sip after
the word’s come alive.

Yet I’m not so far gone
that I won’t say
a prayer to Christopher,
Hermes, Mercury, all
the saints and little gods 
of the long and rambling road,
please, get me safely home.