We Forgot About the Bread

We Forgot About the Bread

(“If you had obeyed me, you would have had peace like a full-flowing river. Good things would have flowed to you like the waves of the sea.” Isaiah 48:18)

Waiting for the day to arise,
for the full sun, the faint sky to push
broadly
through the clouds pretending they are
stone walls
between rumors below and
and celestas above.

And we wait for angels.

I would rather an old friend hug
me for one minute longer
than meet an extra-terrestrial, winged
and spinning. When someone told me
they paid for my stay,
I did not assume they were heavenly.
I was happy they lived next door to me.

Once I prayed for days on end for
fire. Once I thirsted privately and
imagined visions suggested to me.
I pounded the carpeted floor,
I petitioned the bronze anatomy of
heaven
to help me convince onlookers
of my spiritual bona fides. There was
little left to hide while I watched for a
wind or a
wave or a
dream or an
angel (so it seemed).

While we knelt behind pianos,
while we were prostrate on antique floorboards,
we hoped for a handout from a messenger to tell us
we had been in the presence of god.

Amens sometimes punctuated the crying. Fierce
words brewed within cauldrons; souls bubbling over with
who knew what or why.

While we prayed just 10 minutes longer to guarantee
our purity,
and did so in all sincerity,
we forgot about the bread and the fishes
and the five and some-odd thousand who waited
for bread.