[Julie Steiner]

More Religious Twaddle for You, Maz Dear

This sonnet would annoy you, I suppose.
(“I suppose is filler... this is maud-
lin sentiment...”) You’d never spare the rod
from this one, since you never did with those
I workshopped. How you must have held your nose,
critiquing my religious stuff! “Oh, God,”
you’d type, then tell me where my meter was flawed
(“Like there?”) and skewer my unconvincing close.

Yet you were kind...suspending disbelief
to teach your Christian neighbor to pursue
the Powerful, the Perfect, and the True.
Remembering that kindness makes my grief
much less, you so-called atheist, for how
could what you loved so long deny you now?

--Julie Stoner