Underneath the Eaves

Underneath the Eaves

(“Our people should also learn how to set an example by doing good things when urgent needs arise so that they can live productive lives.” Titus 3:14)

Underneath the eaves of yesterday’s lectures
there must be something left to do. I’ve studied hard,
finals are upon us,
but my pencil to the paper hasn’t fed my neighbor yet.
In my time I’ve listened to four thousand sermons,
and I’ve read the bible like a merry-go-round.
But all those notes in the margins haven’t
never wrapped the wounds of the kid next door.

Next time, please leave us with instructions to the
ghettos of our minds. Please help us deconstruct our trajectory
that takes us round and round mountains piled with objections
to every dissenting view. We argue and think
God
is pleased.
We plant our evidence and extinguish the incense
that might have brought us to our knees.

We once cleared the mud from a church’s parking lot,
the result of monsoon floods. Teens with shovels and
wheelbarrows scraped the asphalt bare so the door could open
for the Next Sunday’s sermons and prayers.
I would rather have cleared the driveways from houses of God
where widows lived,
where addicts sighed,
where destitute cried,
where the sun left old bodies drying in overheated living rooms,
and
where the floods and sun left little to recover.

Underneath the piles of mud we dumped into the
woods behind the church,
grass pushed through. We could have planted gardens
for the smaller homes. We could have landscaped hope
house to house to house.