Ventriloquist

by John Driscoll, M.D.

He whispered seamlessly
to his wooden man
whose lips moved,
eyes bobbed and who
was painted into a black suit
effortlessly tailored to his dwarfed
frame.  I heard the wooden
man speak at a church
in a small Southern town
on a hot day.  He hauntingly
exhorted a God that he could
not have known or understood
but I believed him because I was young
and thought that the oaks sang
to me in the wind at night.