Pay to Enter

Pay to Enter

(“And he ordered those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take them out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!’” John 2:16)

Pay to enter; the school, the church.
Pay to play; the immigrant, the poor.
How much money can you make,
What are your assets to insure your entrance?

Who retouched the photos of God with their own portraits?
Who erected the fence around the altar?
Who sold access to the highest bidder?
Who bartered the sun and the rain?

When did you ever receive a bill for your breath,
a charge for the breeze? When deposit did you pay
to see the dawn, what fee to enjoy the grass between your toes?

And now you auction the Painter’s works that you enjoy for free?
You save your glitter for the best of these and
ration your mud to the least.
You do as you please while the Artist opens the studio windows wide,
the cross-breeze brushing each cheek extravagantly.

Play upon the good earth; the rose, the dandelion.
Enter without pay; the festival, the fire.
How much money would it take
to buy the love that covers the world with
its own resemblance.

Paint on my eyeballs Your perfect image;
deeper than the canvas, higher than the circle of this earth,
broader than borders. Script upon my ears
the song that banishes walls, that is purer
and more fearsome than repeated phrases
shouted at rallies to keep the rabble away.

I will not raffle the Handiwork of the Beloved.