She Never Dressed for Dinner

 

She Never Dressed for Dinner

(“Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker. Whoever rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished.” Proverbs 17:5)

She never dressed for dinner,
it wasn’t worth the effort. And days alone,
days of cold,
days of cardboard and railroad clatter
only repeat
the chatter she hears when she
limps downtown.

She sat in the back at church,
she sat in the shadows,
she always left early,
she knew the lines by heart.
The righteous always prospered,
the wicked lost it all,
and the way she saw it
she had no more to lose.

The snow snuck in the corners of her trailer,
the floor had rotted, and the children cried.
Once a year, or again at Christmas,
someone came by with mittens and a turkey
and she never was ungrateful, but she always cried.
What would she do when the mercy ran out?
What would she do when the big machine made
decisions, when the official positions were like
incisions in her soul? What work could she do
to earn a place at the table when she had no money
to wash her children’s clothes?
She knew the smell, she had grown up with it,
and stayed away from pretty places with hardwood pews
and unstained carpets. She knew their songs
but kept her distance.

They promised to pray, the people in the steepled building
warmed by weekly contributions. They told her to tithe. They
told her it would be multiplied. They had not lied, they
had not been honest with themselves and told the truth they
had been fed.

No one laughed at her. But no one treated her like a miracle,
a wonder,
a daughter,
a sister,
a reflection of her Maker,
a beloved image of God.