As Jesus Walked

 
 
“Remember the little church where Dad preached
that walking with Jesus was an adventure?”
my sister Rachel asks after the funeral.
Fearful that she is going to become maudlin,
I turn my face to the wall and say nothing.
“Come on,” she pleads. “Don’t you remember?”
 
“What if I do? Then what?”
 
“There is no ‘what,’” she says. “I just feel
so lost and alone now that Dad’s gone,
and I thought that remembering something concrete
from his preacher days might help both of us.”
 
“Well, you thought wrong!” I snap. “I’m
not looking for signs and wonders
to multiply like loaves and fishes.
I don’t need a myriad reassurances
that Dad has gone to some so-called ‘better place.’
There is no better place.
Wherever I am is the place.
He’ll be with me in Mexico when I stumble, weeping,
through the cobbled streets of San Miguel,
and when I come back and circle the block on my morning walk—
if you let him go.
Free him from the prison of your memory
so that he can walk with me
as Jesus walked with his disciples by the sea.”
 
© 2011 by Magical Mystical Teacher
 

More Thursday Poets’ Rally, Week 53 here
 
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