This Bread
Mark Phillips
[lamppoet@minot.com]
"Don't work for food that spoils. Work for food that gives
eternal life. The Son of Man will give you this food."
-- John 6:27
Our contentions are hunger pangs,
there's no life in banquet halls filled with high speed clamor.
Our grittiness is an untrained palate,
our griminess unwashed demands,
our grimness from famine of forgiveness,
our grating from pretense's transient relief.
Sweat rolls from our foreheads to dining tables,
roughened hands and grizzled arms grab the dishes
while starving.
Did you work for this?
A home with padded conversations and still-life reproductions?
Did you work for this?
A church with madly raised hands, furiously dancing feet,
carefully planned conduct, and the unwashed unwelcome?
Did you work for this?
A nation split over who helps who to the bread line? Who
gets in line?
Who gets the
headline?
Did you work for this?
This starvation playing hide-and-seek with the sun,
this frozen dinner insisting on microwave freedom?
Join me at the Table where food is given
Graced and un-rationed to all the honestly starving.
Pull up your chair next to mine (I saw your tear upon
my invitation). His food is always better shared.
Stay as long as you like, linger here with me,
bare your soul where baring need not expose us to men's laughter
or sneers.
This is the Table where family begins,
Friendships forms and
Forgiveness is offered at every course of
every Meal.
Poem © 2001 Mark Phillips, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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