Pentecostal Regret

This is ingrained in me:

I know how to worship.

But I can’t anymore.

There is no appropriate place or time or season.

I can’t kneel before a masterpiece at a downtown art gallery,

weeping at its glory.

I can’t whoop and holler as the credits roll at the movie theater.

I can’t raise my hands to praise the local band at the dive bar,

and I don’t have anyone to sing for anymore.

The harmonies I learned are wasted.

I want to kiss the earth of a hilltop on the Appalachian Trail.

I want to baptize myself in South Holston Lake.

I want to be anointed with oil by the poets and artists I admire.

I want to wash their feet with my hair and dry them with linens.

How do I ask this of them?

I don’t ask.

I don’t act on these impulses.

I regret.

I know how to worship,

            even if I don’t any longer.