I love Miss Hooker plenty and want to marry her when I’m old enough, I’m too young now, 10 to her 25 but some- day I’ll be the right age even though she’ll be older too, and by the same number of years but I won’t mind, love’s got it all over numbers, at least that’s what I pray every night, and to me that’s religion
so after Sunday School this morning I tried to make just that point to Miss Hooker, I asked her to marry me when I was old enough, am old enough, I mean, or is that when I will be old enough or do I mean the same thing but in three ways so different, past, present, and future, so different that all three mean the same, kind of like God, Jesus, and the Holy
Ghost, that other Trinity, that is, or maybe it really isn’t? Miss Hooker said to me to ask her if she’s single and if I’m still bent on her, ask her again, that is, when the time comes and only then will she answer me yes or no or maybe. But I’ve got maybe right now, I told her, which made her smile and say Gale, you’re a cunning thing, which must be good even if it isn’t so so I must be a third of the way into her
heart, yes will get me married and as for no, if it comes after yes then I’m safe. If I tell you yes come then, Miss Hooker added, we’ll only have a few years to- gether before I pass away. I said Yes ma’am, fine, but if you have a little sister then she can take up where you left off. Then she laughed and said that she admires a man who knows exactly what he wants. Yes ma’am, I answered—I’m the same damn way.
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in several countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.
