Comfort

That day lightning flashed,
    even as the sun shone in a clear sky,
My little child, always so fearful of lightning,
    was playing in the yard.
She came running to the house, crying.
With what I thought was a stroke of mother-genius,
    I asked her, “Do you remember the verse?”
On the take-home Sunday school paper
    that Sunday it had been,
    “I will be with you always.”
She was clinging to me, sobbing.
“I remember,” she said,
    “but I want to be near somebody with skin on.”

—Helen Wade Alderfer, Goshen, Indiana, is part of a poetry writing group, volunteers at the local elementary school, remains active in her assisted living and church communities, and was long an editor of various Mennonite magazines. She is author of The Mill Grinds Fine: Collected Poems (DreamSeeker Books, 2009).