What If, All Along, You’ve Been Hating the Wrong Man

What If, All Along, You’ve Been Hating the Wrong Man

There is so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.

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                                                                                    Marilynne Robinson

What if you’re hating the wrong man?

What if Jesus, the Jesus you know is the God

            your father knew and you hate them both

            because they are the same
            paradox?

What if the Jesus you heard in church is the Jesus

            your brother cups in his hands, priest’s oysters

            he’ll call them later because clutch is money

            and he'll be ok until he’s twenty and is told

            to be ashamed but it takes a while, a long while

            because it all tasted so good and still does

            even though there are no other men now.

What if it didn’t start with a priest, maybe it never was

            a priest, maybe it was just discovery discovery

            as though all along it had been waiting on nothing

            special but came as a simple light a thin sliver

            picked out of the bare foot that makes a man

            stop and pause and pull it away and walk on

but not before he looks up not before he sees a shape

            lift itself up a man among men who desires

            who is gentle who will love him who has been

            waiting to love him but neither knew it and won’t

            know it until the stone until the dark until the priest

            until the brother after you refused the job

all those years ago who sent your beloved charge instead

            and never not really how could he after all that

            forgive you?