Barbara Crooker: "Walking with Jesus"

after David Kirby

in the Blue Ridge Mountains, eating corn fritters
and okra, passing the black-eyed peas. He loves
redbirds and kudzu, all that green tenaciousness.
He's not so much of a fan of men in white sheets,
gun racks, the Stars and Bars, but he's Jesus, so
he loves them anyway. The gospel of football
eludes him, but he sure likes to tailgate. He tells
me that all the commandments are really
about sitting with your neighbors on a wide
front porch, eating peach pie, watching the sun
go down. Why are you still going on about sin
and salvation, he asks me, when you have all this,
right here, right now?

"Walking with Jesus" by Barbara Crooker. Published online by Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought, March/April 2014. © Barbara Crooker.

Art credit: "Old Wooden Rocking Chair on a Wooden Porch," photograph by Jeremy Woodhouse (originally color).