New Deacon
This poem received an honorable mention in the 2021 Clinton F. Larson Poetry Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies.
It is our son’s first trip down the chapel aisle steering a silver tray of broken bread. Repentant faces lift his way and smile:
our flock, dear villagers who raised this child to bear their burdens, keep their spirits fed beginning with this trip down the chapel aisle.
He follows solemnly the loping file of taller boys, and his too-inclined head makes us turn to each other, shrug, and smile.
This earnestness, and shoes that for a while will still be much too big, seem to have led to his hopefully only trip down the chapel aisle:
with scuff, then cry and clatter, clang and sprawl, the ordinance’s dignity has fled. Startled faces crane his way, then smile
at us. We nod. What better place to fall than here, where all things rise? Hands rugburn-red, he picks tray, bread, and self up from the aisle, too sheepish and too shepherded not to smile.