by Jo Angela Edwins
Beyond this screaming red mouth built square
of wood and paper and paste,
there is a green unplanted field,
a forest of pine, a few gone brown
from the appetite of greedy beetles.
Others will die soon enough.
I think of my least favorite story of Jesus,
how the fig tree gone barren in a season
his father had built for barrenness displeased him so
that he cursed it to wither in an instant.
What choice had the fig tree in its barrenness?
Is the world meant to bend to man’s son’s hungers?
Don’t preach to me of symbolism,
of the blindness of the Pharisees, unless
you accept it all as symbol. I know of the good
of Jesus, how quickly he chased the wicked
from the Temple, cast the legion of demons
into swine. But then again I feel sad for the pigs,
who never asked to be drowned by evil spirits.
What do we do with our questions,
when their marks at the end curl backwards
like so many accusing fingers?
What does God do, then, with so many demons
scolded and wrapped in scarlet rope?
Then what does he do with the blanched body of his son
risen from the tomb, nearly finished with his time
on earth, and perhaps glad of it, full as it is
with people eager to spend gold for no better purpose
than putting so many angry words in his mouth.