Friday, the Second Week of Lent

Friday, the Second Week of Lent

I have often wondered why he didn’t call it off
the wedding banquet
say the special session is adjourned
send the marchers packing
tramping off to farms and business wives and oxen
put all the wedding garments in mothballs
along with the dreams of mothers children
aching feet and aching bellies rising rents
hanging on from waving fist to locked door
to snarling face to empty cupboard to eviction notice
from your national guardian.

I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now and know for sure
an invitation just is not a wedding garment.

Both Jesus and I were youngsters once upon a time
received an invitation to the wedding feast of life
and blanket in hand wandered off
to wedding after wedding dance
darting around the polka-dotted dancing floor
ducking in between the lusty swirling wives and lovers
gliding across a world
that was worn only once upon a wedding garment time
and perhaps slightly crumpled
both in body and in soul
the following Sunday church-going morning.

But I was so much older then
I’m even younger than that now
I
a child roman-collared celibate
offspring of a people’s need
I have stood there on the sideline long enough
clutching the invitation
I am roaming now the countryside
checking on those farms they said were newly bought
soil-banked and weedy welfare world
strangling all the land
living on the suplus promises
that are doled out daily at press conferences
auditing the business as usual
they said was what our country was founded on.

I have seen a thousand farms
a thousand wives a thousand oxen too
all of them idle
while the wedding invitations scatter in the wind
and Jesus walks alone.