A Few good years

//gale acuff

I do love Jesus but not enough to
love Miss Hooker less, she's my Sunday School
teacher and I want to marry her but
I'm 10 and she's 25 and subtract
the former from the latter, I mean me
from her, that's fifteen years and I know
that God is old, or at least timeless — are
they the same? — but He's not too far off from
that fifteen years, or is it those, or are
they those, the differences between me and
Miss Hooker, not that she'd fall for me like
I have her but if we were closer in
age then maybe the chances of getting
spliced with her would be greater. As it is
I'm going to have to wait 'til I'm grown
up, too, 16 maybe, 18 say, to

her 31 or 33 and ask
her for a date and if she enjoys it
go from there and be sure to remember
that she'll be older, too, after 30
folks start slowing down and after 40
they get it for certain that they have to
die so that gives us a few good years and
then I'll take care of her 'til she expires
and goes to Heaven and wouldn't it be
something if when I die I join her there?
— I sin a lot for ten years old and she's
trying to save my soul before it's too
late even as I'm trying to show her
a little something about sin while there's
still time, before she never learns what she's
fighting for, or is that against. It's love.

//Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Concho River Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). He has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.