Difficult, Tennessee

In memory of Tom Logue

One day Tom and Ethel dropped
their baby Louise by Ethel’s brother’s
while driving through Tennessee.
Making their way back to I-40,
Pastor Tom saw a road sign
for two nearby towns: 

Difficult 2
Defeated 4 

Being a Baptist, he knew
without ever visiting that
somewhere there was bound to be
a Difficult Baptist Church,
a Defeated Baptist Church.
He’d seen both,
and being young, smart,
and in love with all things ironic,
he smiled and drove on. 

That was before muscular dystrophy
claimed his oldest son Tommy at 18,
before schizophrenia came to horde out
his youngest son John,
before Tom found how little
give there was to grief. 

He lost his appetite over time
for the cake of gloat and smirk,
came to chew on wonder’s crust:
Does anyone ever move
from Defeated to Difficult? 
Or from Difficult to Defeated? 

Either way it’s only two miles.
Though both places seemed a thousand miles
from nowhere, he came to know, sure as the world,
he’d be a goner in Defeated,
but in Difficult, there he could make it:
He’d vote in every election,
sweep its streets, paint its fences.