momma gave him a Bible for his tenth birthday…golden letters…red leather cover…picture of Jesus holding a lamb…another of Mary in the manger with Joseph building a craddle…wise men all around…picture of a girl getting mana from Heaven…Jonathon and David shooting bows and arrows…Zacchaeus up in a tree…waiting for the Lord…waiting for the Lord…

this Bible he took everywhere…on camping trips…in the back seat on long distance drives ‘cross country…to his grandparents’ house for the summer…havin’ it next to him while he fished on Turkey Lake…kept the book in a backpack as he rode horses and skinned his knees on back gravel roads lookin’ for stones to toss…skip ‘cross the water…

had it with him when he left home…hitchhiking on Lincoln Highway…reading it in semis as drivers had country radio turned on…songs ’bout cheatin’ spouses…drunken nights…wild characters out on a rampage…stand by your man…

kept silent as he got dropped off at truck stops in the middle of the night…out in the cold without a dime to his name…fillin’ out applications in small towns…Joplin…Hicksville…down South in Paris, Texas…moppin’ floors at a Dixie-Que in Sparta…makin’ ends barely meet…

and he read the Bible in New York City…read it loud on street corners in Times Square…talked to whores on Seventh Avenue ’bout the second comin’ of Jesus…spoke of miracles…miracles..

wound up an old lonely man…dyin’ inna rented room up in the Bronx…his Bible by his side…torn…fallin’ apart…still kept it…still kept it…

had no-one to pass it onto when he died…it was taken from his room along with a hot-plate…coffee maker…a blanket his aunt made…some said he accomplished nothin’ in his life…that’s what some said…