Perspective
(12-02:4nhoJ 1)

“.God dear,
...........others love
can i so truly

You love me

Help
,God Dear”

: prayer

a loud out crying
while kneeling silently

and waiting

(“you have it all backwards My Child”
He said)

“,God Dear”

,again began i

Providence

in retrospect i should have known better:
the angel only stayed for 12 minutes
after announcing my cousin's sixth month

proclaiming my own 9 (and adding too
the 3 hours of uneasy labour
that's so comfortably lost from those songs).

at age three the 3 gifts arrived followed
by 30 birthdays of finding His place
fulfilling a divine triumvirate.

next: triple temptation, 12 disciples
and parables oft told in triplicate
(though as before Pontius Pilate He proved

He’d never use four words when 3 would do)
and then for 6 hours I watched Him hang
there on all 3 crosses torn by nine nails.

all this after being denied thrice by
His closest of 3 (and the cock’s third call)
but of course now I smile and remember

when as a boy He lost us for those 3
days being about His Father’s business
(a Passover that nearly broke my heart:

3 days searching for His face). it should have
come as no surprise that 21 years
later He would play the same trick again.

Faith

: after we returned to shore
and their initial amazement wore thin
mention was made of my forgotten focus
and subsequent sinking

they had their laughs
at his lesson (and my expense)
but He soon came to my rescue
noting not only my wet robes

but their dry feet

The Preacher: he thinks of the Hunchback Girl

“I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can give me any word but Wait,”
~ Gwendolyn Brooks

my Father why (amid Your proper halls
and ev’ry servant corner) is Your Her
plan pain? why must Her crooked gait not be
seen (nor set) straight by eyes which ever look
down? have not Her bright hosannas (from a
heart which halts not love) pierced the bounds of Your
bright blue place? or must She temporally
miss warm mornings in Your merit’s gifting
glare (remaining coiled, screwed, and bound: huddled
in solitude without a hand to hold)
‘till She proceeds to Your most proper place?

~MEH

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a once and future high school English teacher from Boston, MA. A graduate of Eastern Nazarene College, MEH has works appearing in Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction & Poetry by Multicultural Writers, Credenda Agenda, and forthcoming in The Hills are Alive, and Word is Bond.