Irresponsible, self-indulgent, immature,
But your father doted and declared, “playful, fun, what joie de vivre!”
While you, with furrowed brown and strong hands
Trudged out to the fields after rising early each morning.
You picked up his slack, maintaining a running tally of
his folly, your fidelity
Has this resentment grown in drips like mineral formation – slow, steady, consistent – over years until it calcified your insides?
Has the echoed refrain “it’s not fair” clenched your jaw, tightened your belly, constricted your lungs?
When he wished your father dead and set out, bent on self-destruction with wine, women, and song, did you mutter “good riddance!”?
His, now: paternal embrace, a ring, a cloak, sandals, melodrama of tears though he still stinks of swine, shameless.
From your dark corner, arms crossed over a heart justifiably hardened, smell the beef on the fire, fat sizzling in the flames.
Are you jealous because I am generous? All I have is yours. You are always with me.
These are not the words you want to hear. Not the ones that will tip the scales to your standard of justice. No opportunity to
display the years of your scorecard tallies, no settling of accounts, no reckoning. Just unrequested mercy, debts not paid but cancelled – surprise – an unwanted miracle of the dead returned to life.
Unprodigal son: tear up the tally sheets, pull down the scale. They have not served you.
Go now. Party. Draw fire’s heat near you. Chew meat. Drink wine. Dance until you feel beating strong within you
a heart of flesh.
This poem also appears in the February 2022 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 87, No. 2, page 17). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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