January 2011 Challenge Winner

Congratulations to Sandra Fees, winner of the January challenge, to write a poem about prayer (but not itself a prayer).

The Sloping Room

When he pulled down
the rotted porch,
my father discovered
why the front bedroom
sloped, as it did,
not from settling,
after all,
or from the gremlins
roiling under my bed,

but because a log
was missing,
as if in building
there were some hurry
or a timber shortage,
as if the poor man’s
farmhouse
would naturally
lean a little,

deserve a little less,
to keep him honest,
and always on bended knee,
just the way my father taught me
to bend my knees
toward the rough planks,
to press palm to palm,
my small body,
a pew wanting to be a steeple,

a 90-degree angle
forming squares
and quadrangles,
when all I really wanted
were hula-hoops
to swing around my hips
and little wheels
to spin their o’s
in the sloping room.

~ Sandra Fees


I like the indirect approach to prayer in this poem, how it works its way in between the sloping floor and the child's wish for play rather than prayer. I was especially moved by these lines:

just the way my father taught me
to bend my knees
toward the rough planks,
to press palm to palm,
my small body,
a pew wanting to be a steeple,

There is a seeming contradiction between the desire "to be a steeple," and the conclusion, wanting only hula-hoops and little wheels. The narrator wanted to play, but evidently also wanted to please her father by praying sincerely. Isn't that the kind of contradiction we all experience in life, often wanting contradictory things?

Sandra Fees retains copyright to her poem; please do not copy it without her consent.


© 2011 Wilda Morris