1972—The Young Pastor Learns A Hard Lesson

The chaplain, they told me at the front desk, was out sick.
Would I be willing to talk to someone who was asking for a minister?
He’s on the third floor, they said, outside the ICU.

I found him pacing.
We exchanged greetings.
He was tall, stooped, in his seventies I guessed.
They were on “one of our trips,” he said.
He had seen the signs to the hospital.
“Drove like a mad man. Got her here fast as I could.”
He told me they were allowing him in to see her fifteen minutes every hour.
“Damn stupid rule,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Got to wait for . . .” he checked his watch . . . “another thirty-five. But you . . . ?”
He said it as a question.
I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “Clergy privilege.”

She lay inert, deathly still, her body trapped in tubes.
Her hair, bottle-orange atop her ashen face, struck me as grotesque.
I took a nurse aside.
“Her husband . . . well, he’s all but frantic. Could he . . . ?” I gestured at the bed.
She grimaced.
“He can come in for ten . . . no, five minutes. It won’t be long . . .”
She left the rest unsaid.
I nodded, ran to bring him in.

He stood by her, leaning near her ear, cooing to a child.
It was too intimate to watch.
A doctor came, told me I should take him out.
I whispered him the message.
He shook his head at that, asked why.
I placed a hand on his arm, tugged gently.
He followed.

Outside the doors, he sank into a chair, wordless, dry-faced.
We waited, not long.
The doctor came to bring the news we knew he would.
He kept it brief, matter-of-fact.
He left.
Forrest—that was his name—glared at me, then roared.
“Why in hell did they—did you—make me leave?
I wanted to be there. I failed her.”

He did not ask for prayer.
I thanked God for that.

—Ken Gibble, retired Church of the Brethren pastor, is a Lancaster County native who gardens, teaches, and writes in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. You can visit his poetry blog at kenslines.blogspot.com.

Baneful Blessing

On Saturdays in summer
my father worked at the feed
mill till twelve. At the noon
meal (we called it dinner)
he would sometimes graft
onto his usual table grace
a phrase I learned to dread,
a red flag warning that
the rest of my day would
not be spent playing baseball.

I believed then and believe
still he was addressing
me more than God or at
least it was fifty-fifty:

“ . . . and Lord we thank Thee
for the privilege of working.”

—Ken Gibble

When the Call Comes

When the call comes
you will hear yourself say
what people say at such times:
    “her suffering is over now”
    “he always said he wanted to go with his boots on”
    “she lived a good life”
and part of you,
most of you,
believes it.

But the rest of you
wants to carry
protest signs
around God’s headquarters
and chant slogans
of indignation
and rage.

—Ken Gibble

Callie

Meek was how I would have described
her if anybody had asked.
No one had or was likely to.

Others, like me, thought she needed
protecting which was why one of them
had told me the man she was seeing

was bad news. “I think you need
to step in, pastor.” So I did,
called him in, told him what I had

heard, said I’d like to hear his side
of the story. The next day she
phoned, said we needed to talk.

She came to my study. She got,
as they say, in my face. “Do you think
I can’t decide for myself who

to marry? Who put you in charge of my
life?” That was for openers. Meek, I decided,
was a word best applied to someone

else.

—Ken Gibble

Revisions Needed

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a banana cream pie.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and I took the one to the left.

To be or not to be?
That is a question requiring careful deliberation. I suggest an ad hoc committee be appointed and that it report its finding at our next meeting.

I wandered lonely as a hobo.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride I took last year . . .
Or was it the year before that?

A thing of beauty Is a joy.
That’s for sure.

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
Or clap your hands.
Or whatever.

Mares eat oats
and doe eat oats
and little lambs eat grass.

Amazing grace, it sure sounds sweet.
In fact, you know, it can’t be beat.

—Ken Gibble