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    Dancing with a Baptist: A Love Story in Poems
    Dancing with a Baptist: A Love Story in Poems
    Dancing with a Baptist: A Love Story in Poems
    Ebook145 pages43 minutes

    Dancing with a Baptist: A Love Story in Poems

    By Libby Stott

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    About this ebook

    Once, in the Bible Belt, a small-town girl
    ran away from church. She met a man,

    handsome, wise, and kind. He was a deacon
    (Baptist, long married). She was a mere virgin.

    They shared in food and many celebrations.
    They asked the old gods in--and they came, dancing.

    This is a tale of heaven, hell, and earth,
    a journey about romancing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    ISBN9781619277083
    Dancing with a Baptist: A Love Story in Poems

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      Book preview

      Dancing with a Baptist - Libby Stott

      OVERTURE

      In the Bright Wood

      2000. 29 September: Michaelmas; also, Rosh Hashanah starts at sundown

      When the earth greened around me,

      and god dozed,

      Arch-angel Michael nudged the Eastern gate

      open, a little. He showed me a jug of wine,

      then raised a silver eyebrow, and he sang,

      I’ll Fly Away. He turned,

      and started walking through the trees

      that glistened with gold fruit.

      I followed his old, winged Wellingtons;

      he wove, but then unwove, a path;

      he stopped and winked, as if to reassure,

      then crowned me with a coronet of laurel.

      He softly touched my hair and then withdrew

      his hand, and then caressed it yet again;

      and yet again drew back. . . .

      As I reached out,

      Apollo to his Daphne,

      he blocked me when he raised up his left palm:

      gold flamed out like a sword and cindered me;

      I rose, an ancient bird.

      FIRST STEPS

      When I Grew Up in Blue Sky, Oklahoma

      My bribe to quit sucking my thumb

      was a Holy Bible

      with colored pictures of Jesus;

      I knew him from Sunday school,

      and from stained glass windows,

      our small town’s only public art.

      And in that glass, he healed the lame;

      but he died with his own legs nailed to a tree,

      his holey arms outstretched.

      He intoned, Come follow me!

      And we sang, I want to be like Jesus!

      Our overprotective families smiled and nodded.

      And after I was baptized all in white

      on my ninth Easter,

      the handsome deacons shouted, Amen! Amen!

      and their helpmeet wives then simpered, Alleluia!

      Going My Way

      For art and culture, we had at home

      a Degas picture my sister and I

      named The One-Legged Dancer.

      For our ballet lessons, we tried to copy her,

      with questionable results.

      We saw more dancing when Mother took us

      to Fiddler on the Roof;

      and afterwards, I tried to dance

      Reb Tevye-like back home.

      And then, in eighth grade, I saw

      an actress dance and sing, portraying Carmen

      while her ex-beau—a priest now—stood and watched.

      I decided to settle for classy singing.

      I begged my dad to teach me Adeste Fideles;

      and when he did, I sang myself to sleep.

      But in my dreams, I kept trying and trying

      to put on a small toe shoe, a slipper of glass

      just before, as a priest myself, I passed

      a silver cup to my sister, as I sang:

      "Christ’s body, broken for me, and hammered

      onto a tree,

      broken for me, a graceless, ugly sinner."

      When other girls were princesses in pink

      I wore a baseball uniform

      with iron-on letters that spelled out Babe. I skipped

      Little House on the Prairie, devoured myths

      of gods and goddesses, read Grimm

      and tales of chivalry.

      Then I dubbed myself a Knight of the Round Table.

      I’d never be the damsel in distress

      who let some villain keep her in a tower,

      or who was rescued when she let cascade

      her ladder of golden hair.

      And I was the first to woo my teachers

      with my stiff, hard-won brightness

      (though I was the last in junior high

      to trade my undershirts for bras.)

      As a carrot-top, I stayed away from the mirror;

      and with my pale, unfashionable skin

      went hats to protect it (also not in style).

      Since I was born on Christmas day

      and never had a party all my own,

      I made each day a holiday of sorts

      by gleaning from my books.

      And the boys my age skittered away,

      but their fathers treated me kindly

      so I learned to trade barbs and accepted any challenge

      that

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