John 13

The great story opened his lungs
and inhaled.

Two pounds of pink flesh
caught the high, cool, upper wind,
savored it,
brought it slowly down
to body temperature.

He listened most of all.
He leaned into rise and fall of the music
like a dancer
strengthened by submission.

It was as offensive as anything.

He wrapped himself in cloth,
like a servant,
like an infant swaddled,
or like death kneeling
with its hands in the water.

My feet are not beautiful, see -
they are not beautiful like yours are.
I've always questioned them,
flat, knobby things, ugly and too big,
serviceable at best.

I would rather they not be touched.

I would rather you look me in the eyes,
so that I might carry you off into distraction.
Or let me woo you with the work of my hands.
Laugh with me,
that we might be intoxicated.

But these feet,

How gently he held them.
"Do you understand what I have done do you?" he said.
"I have loved you to the end."

Then I wept,
because I was bare pink and wet in his hands.


That morning, four Eastern Bluebirds
wove a song across the barbed wire.
They were red in the breast,
azure-backed and fat with bliss,
as if the weight of the world were nothing.