What You Drag Around, part 2

Back in September I wrote a post called, "What you drag around". In it I included one of two poems that I wrote back in the spring of 2006 that shared the theme of carrying an unwanted burden.  It was called "Ball and Chain" and began with the lines, "I am dragging around/ a ball and chain called God."

It seems only right that I publish the second poem too. They really were written in close succession, and they really do belong together like a set of salt and pepper shakers. (I was going to say like a sugar bowl and creamer, but no, salt and pepper feel much more apt!)

Here it is; it's called "The Sack".

The Sack

There's a sack on my back

I thought I had

ditched—

stuffed full and

heavier by the minute.

People keep loading

their God-stuff

into the sack:

hopes, fears,

needs, doubts—so heavy!

Do they imagine

somehow I can

make God makes sense

and shore up their

faith? What about

my own?

If I have any god at all,

if my god is any

who or any

what or any

where, my god

makes a promise:

I will not

ask you

to betray

yourself.

Thus my god my god

you have not

forsaken me.

You hand me

a blade and I slash

the lashings that bind

the sack

to my back.

I do not even turn

to see

where it falls

or what

spills

out.