Poem for my Chaplain

Here is a poem I wrote for my chaplain Fr. Tom Ferguson, who has just accepted a position as dean of Bexley Hall seminary in Ohio for the Episcopal church. This is his "Graduation" poem.

To our Chaplain

I’ve seen the best minds in my generation done-in,
enamored by their liberation
within the college basin of sin,
baptized too fast in alcohol libations.
But where amongst the nameless crowds,
girdled thick by the debauchery,
could I find a place not too proud
to let me join their comradery?
St. Francis House! (Find us with Ariadne’s spool.)
I knew right in those Eucharist crumbs:
The greatest trick the devil pulls
is telling students not to come.
In Soviet Union’s disarray
you found hope past the bleak and scoff,
I feel our God on Ash Wednesday
as you mark my brow like Gorbachev.
Religion seems at times so weird,
but then I see you in your robes
my creeping doubt has disappeared:
Jesus died for sins, not frontal lobes.
For all you do, your sanity remains.
How do you keep Malcolm gently coerced?
You an immovable object, as he runs figure-Eights,
I take him as the unstoppable force.
For “educating us straight to hell,”
enduring all of this monotony
to lead us well andcome to help
us kids from fly-over country,
I give you my acclaim for working with God,
and maintaining a building so old,
well-versed in bat-bagging, Jason Todd,
and fighting radon and toxic mold.
“The past is prologue,”I must concur,
I leave you with a final thing,
I’m fond of this one song I did hear
and times like now, weought to sing:
“On Jordan’s banks the Baptists cry,
announcing that their Lord is nigh.
Oh, but the Baptists have no fun,
thank God I am an Anglican.”