With Apologies to my Hometown

by Debra Gingerich

I have not forgotten the way home, north

through whiteout or moonless sky.

Nor is it deficient gratitude

that keeps me away. Love alone can’t save

this relationship. It is fortitude I lack.

To settle there, you must swell

with hot springs and strut across winter

like a wild turkey. You must take

to murky skies with the free force

that compels snow off rooftops and rest

on the sleeping ground like a whisper.

You can never pull your roots

up above the frozen earth, not even

for one taste of the fresh air. Those roots

will instinctively reach for warmer ground

with a drive as powerful as lust.

Diversity

by Debra Gingerich

Mennonites know something
about beauty, though there may be

no hand-carved crucifix,

no gold-dipped Jesus, no colored glass

to pull the sun in, shining opaque

designs on carved cherry pews.

My uncle sings high and visible

in tenor, his head cocked slightly

to the right, as if the sound

is coming to him from above.

And I learned young that

I would never match my mother’s
soprano, how it curved about
the voices in our country fellowship,

too small to be called a church.

I accepted alto and listened

for the sounds of other women

drifting below the melody,

like shadowing on a pencil sketch.

No one had to tell me

that God somehow can hear,

that he loves four-part harmony.

Otherwise, voices could never

fit together like that. And when

the octet serenades those who sit
through weddings and funerals
on the straight birch benches
of Lowville Mennonite Church,
just the way their parents
sang in the congregation
on Sunday mornings, their voices
sweep paint brushes

along the white washed walls

with more color than eyes

could ever see. And we should have known
that folks who once all wore

that same cut dress, the same plain coat

couldn’t also sing in unison.
Somehow it had to be told that
we are not all made alike.

Gap

by Debra Gingerich

At the Rockvale Outlets next to a patchwork quilt of color-coordinated socks, you cut me off in line to request directions to a restaurant where you might find some Amish or at least Mennonites. You—hoisted up by shopping bags from Mikasa, Hugo Boss, and Donna Karin—ask the cashier what it’s like to live among them. Do the buggies get in the way? You’re in my way of picking up a quick pair of cheap Gap jeans before I drive home in my husband’s bull of a car. Me, a cheerleader in a short pleated skirt, voted most energetic of my senior class, who has never buried my blond, sometimes dyed copper, hair under a prayer covering. I watch Star Trek, own two cell phones, you ignorant urban schmuck. I drank Chianti and danced to Blue Moon as a tattoo of a dove peaked out the shoulder of my sleeveless wedding dress. And this is how some Mennonites cut our bangs short, sassy from an issue of Celebrities Hairstyle. I want to offer you a Pennsylvania Dutch obscenity or something else of the Mennonite experience you’re not looking for—a conversation about the Reformation, how Jacob Ammon led a schism over shunning or the impact of reading Martyrs’ Mirror on a child. But the Amish Farm Museum across the street only offers carriage rides through the covered bridge until five and the cashier just finished writing directions to the Good & Plenty Restaurant. Tonight you’ll feast on creamed corn and Shoofly pie while I microwave my TV dinner into rubbery, stir-fried oblivion.