Funereal Geometry: The Evangelical Congregation Concludes the Funeral by Singing “In Christ, There is No East or West / No North or South,” while Outside the Church and Midway Up, a Steeplejack Tests to See the Steeple’s True
If a plumbline’s run from Heaven’s door bell
to the red baize on Satan’s pool table;
and if such a line bisects their steeple;
and if the steeple’s perpendicular—
perpendicular, foursquare, ever true--
to the church’s temporal foundation,
the workman’s spirit level always rules
theology and recalibration.
Lacking such, the skewed will keep on skewing,
will mime secular drift–anathema
to the faith and the faithful, those who cleave
to the steeple's cleft, crowd a receding
circumference, and create a holy
right angle to the vertical axis.
That’s why the steeplejack’s climbed the steeple
even as the funeral rumbles, smacks
around his calibrations. He’s allowed
no room for error in the elders’ view:
the journeyman’s warrant is the last word
in church doctrine. The steeple must be true,
must aim straight up. The soul shoots for a pole
implied by the steeple. Off-plumb slivers
of a bubble, who knows where the launched soul
might end up. Heaven's the point of a pin.
About the Author: Samuel Prestridge lives and works in Athens, Georgia. He has published work in numerous publications, including Literary Imagination, Style, The Arkansas Review, As It Ought To Be, Poetry Quarterly, Appalachian Quarterly, Paideuma, The Lullwater Review, Poem, Juke Joint, and The Southern Humanities Review.
He is a post-aspirational man whose first book A Dog’s Job of Work is seeking publication. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. His children concede that he is, generally, an adequate father.
Image Credit: John Vachon “Zell, South Dakota. Church buildings” (1942) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 
