The Second Line

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A · Isaiah 55:1–5

Ho, everyone who thirsts; come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
— Isaiah 55:1

Frost on the glass of the church hall doors
before they opened.
My mother’s coat smelled of woodsmoke and lye,
and she held my hand tighter than she needed to.

Nobody talked in that line.
You learned to study your shoes,
the cracked toe of the man ahead of you,
anything that wasn’t a face.

They gave you what they gave you.
You said thank you.
You meant it.
You hated meaning it.

Someone said they were building a tower for God
somewhere on the other side of Durham —
stone going up while we stood still,
a crane against the sky like a promise
made to somebody else.

Tin cup. Tin bowl.
Warm, whatever it was.
You didn’t ask.
You learned early: a full mouth
doesn’t need to know what filled it.

*

Sixty years gone, give or take,
and I’m standing in a different line,
better shoes, better coat,
a man leading me forward
with a small bit of bread, a silver cup.

He says the body of Christ.
He says the blood, shed for you.

My hand goes out before I’ve decided anything.
The bread touches the wine.
And there it is again —
the smell of lye,
my mother’s grip,
the cracked toe of the boot ahead of me,

and I am seven years old,
and I am almost seventy,
and someone is handing me
what I cannot pay for,
and I do not know yet
if I can stand in this line too.

No one asked if I had already paid.
No one asked what waited on my tongue —
the taste of tin, the taste of charity,
the vow of a boy who swore
he’d never take a stranger’s bread again.

Sixty years I kept that vow like scripture.
Earned every bite. Owed no man.
Stood on my own two feet before God and everybody,
and called that standing faith.

But the hand before me now
is not a stranger’s.
It has known hunger.
It has known what men can do
with bread and shame.

It does not hurry me.
Take, he says.
This is my body, given for you.
The bread waits above the cup.
My hand remembers tin.
His hand does not withdraw.