At Least One

At Least One

(“Then the King will say, ‘For sure, I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of My brothers, you have done it to Me.’” Matthew 25:40)

I noticed the color of his voice, dark as midnight,
sorrowful as rain. I saw the sadness in his face, wrinkled in pain,
eyes squinting, the hurt unrestrained.

I expected the warmth I knew, the grace of noon in spring,
the mercy early and new. So much time had passed from the first
to the last
time I understood the best I could do
and the worst I had done
were not loaded upon a scale nor
could cancel each hellish act
with deeds done well.

I knew it now, embraced it how,
son and daughter, brother and sister,
are the new names for my anonymous past.

Today I could not understand, the frown, the hands
clenched like a widow’s upon the casket’s edge.
What loss could change the songs of heaven to
simple silence, a long pause of eternal time,
(a mere second of you disapproval took forever
as you scanned my face from eye to eye).

You looked at me, and the pain was a cannonball of sorrow,
as you looked upon the disregarded, the unrobed, the lately regarded
worst of sinners and simply said to me plainly, amen and
world without end:

“He was my friend”