| Embrace
By H. Mel Malton
(Published in the Anglican Journal, May 2001)
I.
That first acknowledgement was potent enough
-
his chubby baby arms thrown cradle-wide,
a naked smile so wise her knees buckled.
There she was on the ground again,
wrestling like Jacob with an angel demanding release.
"Let me go," God said, but Jacob held and so did she.
"Not yet."
Of course, she was blessed already.
No good girl imagines such an excess of favour,
such a drubbing of miracles.
A mighty muscle, her heart,
that on the eighth day learned its own circumcision,
her own beforeskin torn away
with his small, stoic rite.
That fierce clutch following was hers.
Her schooling seemed ever blood-tied -
the shame of crimson hay, shepherd-tossed,
the ceremonial wound,
then the young pigeons, shekel-got,
white-feathered panic gentled with a curious kiss.
And such an old man blessed them,
The child's arms twined around his neck like vines.
He sang of servants, swords and souls,
the truth of which she locked away bone-deep.
II.
The lad was never any trouble.
A dreamer, perhaps. Obedient.
Free with his affection,
delighted by the commonplace.
Until that dark Passover in the city
when, halfway home, they missed him
and doubted,
searched the market-stalls, the lurking places
where the godless cast their nets and dig their pits.
Any precious boy would catch
wrath for lingering.
Priced above rubies - any boy -
and to be found so serene, solemn, sitting.
No bloodied coat,
no brothers to blame.
Any lioness would clutch her cub
and cuff, then smooth him.
"How could you hurt us thus?"
His soft reply would echo ever after,
three words lingering,
suspended in the canopy,
to clatter later in the dust like coins.
My Father's house.
Oh, he knew who he was.
It has been said that she treasured these
things.
A peculiar treasure, to choose a man,
a nation over gold and silver.
III.
Once upon a later time,
a mild carpenter put down his tools
and went to the river to seek his fortune.
Did his mother watch from a window?
She did not dog his steps.
There were the others to keep.
She could not keep them all.
The reports of him were not easy.
Like any hometown prophet
he was too familiar,
his fame a king's robe devouring
the narrow shoulders of a remembered child.
She might have wished his deeds
to have remained domestic -
water to wine and full nets,
hillside banquets.
She may have hoped all that healing would content him.
The spit to sight, the bleeding stopped,
the making whole.
But then the dead were raised and heads
of state were raised and then
she suspected
some unspeakable public purpose.
The strangers at his birth said crowns,
not thorns.
IV.
Women who bear children wear
a second skin beside the first,
as sensible to feeling as an extra eye.
Mothers know a double exposure -
keep watch over their babes,
every tiny hurt accounted for and borne again,
every wince wept over.
They say he submitted lamb-like,
embraced his mortal objective,
sustained by that mighty will unthinkable.
Her suffering was perhaps private.
But when they wrenched his arms apart
and nailed them there and hoisted him,
she might have thrown hers wide below
to take upon herself what agony she could.
Still streaming love
like a broken beacon, he spoke.
"Woman, here is your son."
And to the grief-numb boy beside her,
"Here is your mother."
If not for that, she might have died.
>From fingertip to bleeding fingertip,
The world was wrapped.
And then
the light went out.
VI.
This story does not end, although
she may not have known this when
she cradled his cold form once more
and let him go.
(The Anglican Journal, May, 2001)
|
Don't
Play with Your Food
By H. Mel Malton
(Pub. Hepatica, 1997)
My neighbour's cows suffer from boredom
In that reeking pen where the mire sucks the hoof down.
Corn-fed, they know dimly that all pastures are greener.
They visit me, sometimes.
Braving the shock-treatment torture of the wire fence,
they break out.
They thunder through the field
To stand like massive puppies on my doorstep, lowing,
Peering in my window, wet muzzles to the screen,
Blowing sweet corn and grass breezes,
Cropping the greenery carelessly. They wait.
I go out speaking softly to scratch a coarse-hair
neck
And beg indulgence for my chives.
Yesterday there was panic in their sound.
No soft bass query but a rising urgent something.
My neighbour there, then, apologetic.
- The truck's here. For them, eh? Don't know how they knew.
Later, I make lentil soup and watch a film
about Alcatraz.
The Universal Toad (or Herpetological Theology)
You’d hardly call this toad majestic.
More domestic, really, when at rest,
relaxing like a sausage on a granite plate
under the element of noon.
And this his cousin, handsome playboy frog,
sleek green and streaked with racing stripes,
who lazes in the water butt beside the door,
whose bandy cowboy legs float limp as rubber pillows
- he is not magnificent.
Down underneath the front door step
a serpent dwells, all liquid dry
and golden-eyed,
and Death to hopping things.
Her hefty neighbours both
have cheated her in battle, so
she eats their smaller relatives instead.
Is there, in Paradise, some Universal Toad
and Frog and Snake curled up together in the sun,
in joyful harmony
like old Isaiah’s wolf and lamb,
no longer prey nor preying-on, but praying?
Fed and satisfied eternally?
There is no sin in any creature but a man -
the mating and the eating habits
of the birds and beasts that shipped with Noah
were not mentioned in the Book of Rules.
This chubby, basking toad and all his fellows
have their place in Eden guaranteed,
and do not need a saviour’s sacrifice
to win them immortality - they simply
act according to their nature,
which was Very Good right from the start.
It’s humankind that needs the rules
against the seven deadlies.
You will never find a lustful toad, nor prideful snake.
No frog will fall to greed.
Death happens to us all, but it’s the animals
who in their simple hearts
know quite instinctively what happens next.
- H. Mel Malton, 2002
The Man in the Ditch
You are not the hero here.
You are the survivor - robbed and beaten up
and stripped, your very self ripped off,
your naked, bleeding body left for dead,
tossed like a piece of rotten fruit
into the ditch.
You hurt too much to wonder
who the bandits were,
(though later some will call them zealots
with a thirst for occupation,
trying to convert you to their cause by force
and deeply sorry afterwards.)
For now, you are the helpless done-to
and this parable is yours.
The minister who came upon you
didn’t minister, but crossed the street
and left you in the ditch.
So, too, the other one - the great official.
We can only guess their reasons.
Nobody identifies with these.
Next comes your enemy,
the one you hate like poison,
and if you were clothed and whole
and saw him in a ditch
you would be tempted to pass by.
This is the one who weeps with pity,
lifts you up and cradles you
and wipes the blood away
and carries you to where help lies,
who pays your way with all he has,
who promises to pay again
because
he is your neighbour in this story
(which was given to you
back when every question
had an unexpected answer.)
- H. Mel Malton - 2002
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