Pledging Allegiance

We baptized her 'Bullfrog' because she lacked much of a throat,
although I imagine the nuns and Father Griffin who presided
over our stuccoed-gray school addressed our third grade teacher
as 'Mrs Bowman' whenever Monsignor Campbell neglected
his pastoral duties cruising alone in a black Lincoln Continental
along the orange and crimson streets of Portland, fat bejeweled fingers
coldly gripping the steering wheel, and it was during that Autumn
of learning the rigors of long division and how Mr Zingeser,
janitor and father of ten little Zingesers who lived
across the street, could skillfully clean up an 8 year old's vomit,
after a breakfast of oatmeal, canned peaches and cocoa,
with sawdust a silver shovel and push broom in one smelly fell swoop
while 40 children in navy blue sweaters tried to ignore his mottled
task. We birthed every school morning with a nondescript prayer
and then the ceremonial salute to the nation's flag dutifully reciting
the Pledge of Allegiance in stentorian semi-unison. It was a crisp
October day right on cue "...and to the republic for which it stands..."
as I, standing patriotically erect behind Karen Younck,
the tallest girl and therefore kid in Bullfrog's class, felt
a sudden cellular surging in my throbbing proud flagpole,
a sense of power that grabbed my total loyalty,
and I knew then in my bones this brown haired girl
towering before me had mysteriously initiated a miracle
of unfurling, and furthermore that she and her fellow sister
citizens would own my unwavering allegiance into the far
future.


Bullfrog surprisingly seemed unawares of this threshold
crossing, this lightning flash lesson in prepubescent civics,
and not a croak was heard from her lily pad under the stars
and stripes at the front of our classroom, although I was sure
even the Zingesers in their rambling house across from school
must have flushed pink the moment my salt and pepper cords
expanded in joy like a sapling on steroids. Two years' later
I stopped believing in God and relinquished a possible career as a priest,
(those strange men who smelled of tobacco, musky incense and starch
and seemed to have found a way to ignore both flagpoles and girls),
about the time Monsignor Campbell snarling, cursed at me
after serving Mass and soon after when both Susan Delaney's
and Mary Burn's blooming tits, skin like Asian silk, and throats
of elegant swans enticing as a smooth pond where debonair frogs cavort
and young men lazing, happily fishing with stiff bamboo poles were tempted,
crossed borders poorly guarded within navy blue sweaters and ironed
white blouses to infiltrate and allure the brains and bodies
of fifth grade boys where a more complicated nation-building
project had begun, only partially undercover, in this republic
under which we now stood pledging our thirst for fledgling goddesses,
plunging wildly, half blinded, surrendering towards an unknown god.