Who’s in Charge Here?
By W. D. Ehrhart
The Twelve-Step Programs all are built
on what each calls “a Higher Power.”
Call it the God of Our Understanding,
Supreme Being, maybe just plain God;
call it what you will: something bigger
than ourselves whose guidance we
ignore at peril of the consequences
of whatever vice we suffer from:
alcohol, overeating, undereating,
gambling, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll.
Name your poison, there’s a program.
And it seems to work for lots of folks;
lives transformed, walking miracles.
Good for them. God bless ‘em,
every one. But what about the ones
who try and try but never make it?
Where’s God when some drunk driver
kills a husband, wife, and infant?
Where’s the Higher Power when
a Muslim woman’s raped by thirteen
Hindus on a city bus in Gujarat.
Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, John
Foster Dulles and his brother
and Bubonic Plague, Wounded Knee
and Gaza and the list goes on and on.
If there’s a Higher Power who’s
in charge of all this madness,
someone ought to take Him out
behind the woodshed with a 2 by 4
and whack Him upside the head.
W. D. Ehrhart’s most recent collections are Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland) and At Smedley Butler’s Grave (Moonstone).
