repentance and the coming kingdom
by jack-jenkins
thursday evening i walk through a marketplace
that smells of warm bread and something
i have no word for yet
figs and wine and the salt of olives
pressed from trees that remember
longer than i do
i have heard there are stairs
broad enough for all of us
ascending toward a mountain
where smoke still rises
from the morning offering
and the faces there
are glad
i have heard the eastern gate swings open
on the seventh day
and something majestic and radiant
passes through the parted crowd
the way water once parted
for a man who also
could not enter
on his own merit
i have heard that even the nations
find themselves falling
not because they are commanded to
but because what else
do you do
when you finally see
what you have always
been reaching toward
and i think about what i have done
with the days allotted to me
how i have taken the holy hours
and spent them carelessly
how i have been handed wine
and poured it into the ground
how many sabbaths i let pass
like strangers i did not invite in
i do not come to this poem
with clean hands
i come the way a man comes
to a door he has no right to knock on
and knocks anyway
because he has nowhere else
to go
because mercy is the only currency
he has left
and even that
was given to him
so i am not asking
to stand beside the King
at the threshold of the eastern gate
i am not asking
to be counted among the holy ones
whose faces glow
with things they earned
i am asking only
for a corner
a closet
a bucket and a mop
let me sweep the outer courts
before the worshipers arrive
let me be the one
who polishes the pavement
where they will press their faces
toward the glory
i will rise before the Sabbath
i will do it quietly
and if i catch one glimpse
of the morning sacrifice smoke
climbing the still air
before anyone else is watching
i will count that
as more than i deserve
i will count that
as everything
and i will plead
not on the merit
of what i have kept
but on the name
of the One
who keeps
and say
LORD
even a janitor
needs somewhere to be