Holy Plates

(Courtesy FitsNews.com)

David Ferry's "The License Plate" (from Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems) wraps up our mini-mini-series on "Licensed Poets." (An appropriate last post, perhaps, before your BTB staff and the Research Bureau hit the road for cooler climes):

On the way back from the hospital we saw
A message on the license plate of a car.

It said GOD HAS. Has what?
Decided finally what to do about it?

The answer to the question that you asked?
The whole world in His Hands? Fucked up? Again?

Apologized? Failed to apologize?
The car went on its way in front of us.

In 2009, a state judge ruled that South Carolina's "I Believe" and other God-themed license plate violated the First Amendment's ban on establishment of religion. (The bill to create the plates had been supported by pre-Appalachian Trail Mark Sanford.) In 2012, a nonprofit rather nimbly figured out how to get around this by creating its own plates, as allowed by SC law. Now it's simply protected speech. When the law gives you lemonades....