Memories from Country Sundays

Country Church - North Carolina

"Hosanna"

was first published

in The Chariton Review

at Truman State University

in the Fall 1979 issue.

Hosanna

James Hart

A prose poem

When on Sunday mornings we gathered to sing, hear sermons, and speculate on the holies, wild-eyed Ruth, the piano lady, earnestly planted her woolen bulk on the bench, fumbling pages with freckled hands, awaiting the word before she whacked the opening chords, attacking the hymn, wild-eyed, flailing the keyboard into ungracious sound.  I didn’t know then how painfully she gleaned song from notes and crippled keys.  She had quit lessons as a girl, to be a farmer’s wife until widowed.  Then she came alone to church to war against her widowhood and emptiness, covering up for grace with robust rendering.  We sang clearly then.  When I was bored with sermons, talk of rocks, and other things heavenly, I imagined that her playing pounded to death starving mice whose musty presence scented cherry wood.  They chewed the felt to stash it away and nest somewhere foreign.  I saw them crucified on strikers, their tales restrung in wire.  The notes echoed in the sanctuary like walnuts dumped on barn floors to dry.  Once, I speculated myself out the door, followed a few sensible mice and moved away, like Ruth’s only daughter, who left for life in sunny California.  I do not sing now, nor smell the odor of mouse and cherry wood.  Still on Sundays when the group that hazards no more than song gathers, I know the woman sits with plunging arms and lusty voice still gleaning from piano keys chaos and hymnal grist, sending mice atremble into stars.