Good Friday, Better Saturday
Jesus ? My word ! Oh my lord, it’s the boss…
Well, I never expected to see you today –
Except maybe just hanging out up on your cross…
Yet it’s funny, but when as a kid we would pray,
And the Reverend Thomas instructed our eyes
To be scrupe’lessly be tight and respectfully shut,
Still I’d sneak them half-open and squint at your thighs,
Half-expecting you’d come down a moment and strut.
When there’s no-one to see, would you take-up the chance
To relax and to stretch, and to smoke, and to dance ?-
Till the words of the prayer were quite lost to my trance.
Yet you never showed even the hint you’re alive,
So you hung just the same when we sipped on your blood,
And you looked down as glum when we learned of the Flood,
And you seemed as remote when our prayer-books would thud,
And we mumbled or massacred Hymn Forty-Five.
But anyway, never mind my reminiscence,
Just how long’s it been since you came round my way ?
For somehow you faded in slow evanescence,
Your black and white certainties merging to grey.
And old Reverend Thomas was no help explaining
The problem of evil or problem of gays,
And so finally, even my lifelong ingraining
Could not keep the wonder or stem the malaise.
But reading the papers, there’s plenty of good news –
From leprosy vaccines to movies and blues,
And there’s juries, and voting, and self-tapping screws –
When abandoned, alone, we learned how to be great.
I had waited and waited back there in your church
For some word or some action to come from your perch,
But unheard was my questions, and unseen my search –
Until now, when I find you, I find you too late.
Rhyming Couplets 