Smuggler

1 a.m. Snow prints trail in moonlight.

He hauls a crammed duffle bag,

boards a dory, paddles noiselessly

across a river. Distant owls hoot.

He tramps up the bank to a plowed dirt road,

sweat dripping, breath fogging in 17o temps.

Headlights snowball-he dives behind a tree,

freezes. A camouflaged truck blasts by,

taillights shrink to red glow, vanish.

His boots crunch on snow. If caught,

torture or worse.                                     Hours trudge

until he spies the small house silhouetted by stars,

quickens, knocks in code. Windows shuttered.

A door opens, closes, bolts. She lights a candle.

He unzips the bag, yanks aside packed clothes,

reaches up to his shoulder and

 

places twelve paperback bibles across the table.

The writer has written sacred and secular verse for decades. He has been published in Prairie Messenger, Windhover, The Anglican Theological Review, Ancient Paths, The Christian Communicator, Time of Singing, The Christian Century, and others. He is a member of the Winston Salem Writers. He serves a life sentence, condemned to write verse. His Jesus Through A Poet’s Lens is now available via Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Peter+Carrington+Venable&ref=nb_sb_noss