Parochial Beginnings: poem by Darrell Petska

image by Andre Rau, on Pixabay, slightly modified

Parochial Beginnings

Working the system came early to us boys,

shrewdly answering “I’ll be a priest”

to Father Tom’s question about vocations,

for we’d seen older boys who’d professed like us

awarded opportunities others didn’t receive—

never thinking ahead to our dying day

when most certainly the all-knowing Lord,

having read the encyclopedias of our lives

as plumbers and mechanics and bankers and clerks,

would gaze into our souls and ask, “Now, what was it

you assured Father Tom you’d one day be?”

                                 **

Sister Jeanne Marie made God unscary

and studying our catechisms fun.

She was young, pretty, her voice an angel’s.

(A wisp of auburn hair always escaping her veil.)

She joined all our recess games,

ran like a gazelle, shined at jump-rope,

soared on the swings, her tunic ballooning.

Perhaps she made the older nuns jealous.

Perhaps she lived ahead of the times.

Perhaps she hadn’t read God’s fine print.

She taught us two years and never came back.

                                 **

Someone has done it, thus, ranked and filed

our class stood as school day ended—

till someone would confess.

We stood at attention as our parents arrived.

We stood at attention as Father Tom swooped in:

This will not do. We must love, not hate.

But Philip had football. Mary had dance.

Our bladders filled to brimming.

Wavering like willows, we stood,

Father Tom’s stern eye raking our thoughts:

Tomorrow, I shall hear confessions. Now go.

                                 **

My parochial school grudge fell away

at graduation: no more having to crown,

each May, Our Lady of Fatima, the statue

memorializing my sister, as the student body

and half the town sang “Immaculate Mary”

while my mother silently wept.

My manhood on the horizon,

I would put aside childish whims

and finally forgive my sister

for so rashly dying at nine

when I was happily eight.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering

editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

His poetry appears in Amethyst Review, Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Orchards Poetry Journal, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). Father of five

and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.

(August 2026 issue)