For Thanksgiving

The New Puritans

A funny thing happened on the way
to social progress: the pillory came back.
Any passer-by could take a whack
at sinners, on display for hateful speech,
who flinched and squirmed, re-thinking what to say,
their hands imploring heads they couldn’t reach.

A scarlet letter R decried the sin
that lay beneath a wrong-ish choice of word.
In the hands of an angry god the guilty heard
the clap of doom — while pale judgment sat
arrayed in the black they saw their peer group in,
lacking but the tall, brass-buckled hat.

Karl Stull is a retired copywriter and editor. He began in textbook publishing and moved on to marketing. Now he writes for the love of words.