The Old Religious Poets Did Fine

James Tipton

The old religious poets did fine

trying to mend God with rhyme

and for Christ’s sake

with a meter divine.

But how do I, a cobber, fare

in our own fine time

trying to mend the inner shoes

of others, or mine,

without a hard hammer

of the orthodox kind?

Sewing has become a mystery

done in the dark;

there is no stitchery

or school to teach

a thread its work,

no lovely witch of nails

to teach me how

to hob a shoe to home.

Still, the shoes we walk in

when we sleep or suffer grief

or simply wear of too much living

are, despite the difficult repair,

the ones that need some care

for the high and lonely

holy journey.

[Previously published in The Lake Chapala Review (Mexico)]

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James Tipton lives in Chapala, in the tropical mountains of southern Mexico, where he writes poetry and enjoys village life. His work is widely published, including credits in The Nation, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Greensboro Review, Esquire, FIELD, International Poetry Review, Christian Science Monitor, Mountain Gazette, American Literary Review, El Ojo del Lago, Lake Chapala Review, Living at Lake Chapala, and Mexico Connect. His most recent collection of poems, Letters from a Stranger, with a Foreword by Isabel Allende (Conundrum Press, 1998), won the 1999 Colorado Book Award in Poetry.

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