Sarah Ramsey
Jon Tribble Memorial Winner
A tattered hymnal resting in old pine,
Forgotten, buried—a casket of dust.
Pages filled with prayer in rhyme, lost to time,
Entombed of my heart with decades of trust.
Señor, your heart still trusts—it falters not.
Your hymnal’s pages are pristine and clean.
Far be it that tears should form from my thoughts
on the matter—but your thoughts I must glean.
You call me Eve, which makes you my Adam;
I am missing God and you lack a rib.
Therefore, to fix this issue, you fathom:
“Return to God—your place above my hip.”
If my praise weren’t in shambles, I would yield,
And you have yet to make an opening
to climb into. Dogma remains your shield
against my memory and reasoning.
Another tradition says we were trees—
Or rather driftwood washed upon the beach.
Found by three brothers, who stopped when they see
the potential for life, beauty, and speech.
Odin breathed life into Embla and Ask,
brought them together and gave them Midgard.
Before departure, he gave them one task:
Hold one another in highest regard.
Why do you only consider Adam,
Who was made from the ground and not driftwood,
Whose sins reprehend you like a phantom,
Hold you captive in an endless priesthood?
What if, like Ask, you were simply a tree,
Floating in water until God found you,
Given the purpose to live and be free,
To find a person to pour love into?
Your sigh is angry—that cannot be right.
My sigh is sad—it doesn’t have to be.
I know we are distinct like day and night,
The sun and moon for each other still plea.
I am your rib, Adam—you are my tree.
The same spirit that breathed life into you
also breathed life into me. Don’t you see?
It can be both and it will still be true.
What if in every life and culture,
In every religion, we are there,
Fulfilling a plan of love through structure:
Myths that speak to us and cause us to pair?
How else, señor, could we be sitting here,
on an old church pew talking about gods?
Honduras is far from Tennessee, dear.
Even further, our faiths—always at odds.
It is normal for books to wear and tear,
For churches to face abandon that’s slow.
It doesn’t matter as long as I share
all of my faiths with you—te quiero.