No One Leaves Hungry

No One Leaves Hungry

(“He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to the sky, he blessed them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude.” Luke 9:16)

I do not know who you are
reading these words,
seeing this page online,
but I want to share my bread with you,
my skin with you,
the tent I live within.

The dirt that I am made from,
the mud that molds my frame
is the same as every other earther,
we are 6 billion and the same.

And Jesus loved the bread of the land,
he love the fruit of the vine,
he shared it like a baker,
he blessed it like a priest,
he divided it like a maître d,
he held it like a grandfather on
Christmas eve.

No one leaves hungry when we share our bread,
no one leaves angry when we keep our skin on,
no one deserves our judgment, no one knows the story
from first to last, from vast lifetimes birthed without
our consent.

So we set the table; no we dine on the couch or
the picnic blanket closer to the soil. We are broken,
we are one,
we are open,
we are children aching for the sun
with our unanswered prayers and losses,
our good fortune and the gossips that talked
out of time.

We invite the one who spoke behind our back,
(our own words were swords not long ago).
We make room for the loneliest widow,
for the offkey and off the mark beliefs
we are certain are mistaken.

But this is becoming too unwieldy,
I only want you to know my story
and listen like it is bread that has been baking
and filling your head like yeast, and filling your
heart to
love the least and just join the band of humanity
that multiplies in the hands of dusty people
who still hunger for a shared loaf of bread.

From mud to grain, there is no better explanation
than a preoccupation with love.