I can do no more.
Death's fingers grip my heart,
and my breaths rattle
like dry bones in a cracked urn.
I have only hours left.
And what have I taught him?
Nothing.
I have failed.
He has seen only poverty,
blisters and sweat
shaping out of wood
a few coins,
rarely enough to buy
anything beyond necessity.
I knew my trade:
I was good with wood and stone.
Our friends had little,
what friends we had.
Some elders still whisper behind my back,
so good at sneering and pointing
at others.
And how did I respond?
Silence.
He witnessed my humiliation.
I taught him nothing.
The best jobs were in Capernaum,
a rough town,
where money flows like water.
Everytime I took him there to work
I felt like Lot going into Sodom,
allowing him to see Jews and Gentiles
at their worst.
Sometimes I feared my vision was mere delusion,
some mad and desperate dream of youth.
Yet when his brown eyes,
like a pair of darting rabbits,
ran through the Law, I knew.
My mouth trembles with each rasping breath.
I am sawdust blown off by the wind.
So much I should've taught him.
some sort of dignity fit for a king,
but he's seen only me
and my struggles
and my poverty
and my pain.
What is there fit for a Messiah?
©1993 John Schreiber
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