Balletic slim with gently nubile curves

And sweetly graced extensions of long limbs—

They sway, step, bend to syncopated hymns.

Their mothers beam. How well, they think, dance serves

God’s glory (and their own) in finer style

Than old processions jumbled full of tots,

White-veiled and bumptious, tasting nuns’ DO NOTs,

Surging off center down the middle aisle.

Lord, as You look on such eclectic prayer,

Such very now liturgic elegance

With its proponents all quite blind to where

It self-creates less happy circumstance,

Hold tight and tenderly within Your care

Little fat girls who won’t be asked to dance.