I thought

A poem for today

I thought about the graffiti on the inside of the pew. Initials carved with an ‘L’ between them.

I thought about the small hard cold seat in the pew.

The sun flooded the floor for a moment in the diamond shapes of the window. Trembling with the trees.

I thought about the lit candles placed on the step and the icons I couldn’t quite see from my seat.

I thought about what I should be thinking about. About Good Friday. About a man dying. A man who wasn’t famous yet. I thought then about people dying.

I touched the keffiyeh at my neck and wondered for the hundredth time if I should or should not be wearing it.

I felt my tummy, full of lunch and thought about people who I don’t know who are hungry. I don’t know how that feels.

The sun flooded the floor for a moment in the diamond shapes of the window. Trembling with the trees.

I thought about people dying in Congo, and that I don’t know much about it but I think it’s about metal and mining and my greed.

The sun flooded the floor for a moment in the diamond shapes of the window. Trembling with the trees.

I thought about writing this.

I thought about apartheid.

I thought about greed.

The sun flooded the floor for a moment in the diamond shapes of the window. Trembling with the trees.

I couldn’t help smiling at the light.

I watched the light on the blue carpet to my left. I looked down from the side of my pew, like a sailor watching the waves.

The light waved. The light.

I remembered that I too was bleeding today.

I thought about scapegoats and about complicity. And about people sitting and standing nearby. And I thought that I could never know or think of everything. That it would never be enough.

I thought about the sunlight. In diamond shapes.

I wanted to make a print of that light. To capture it. To keep it.

I thought.

And it wasn’t not prayer.

On sitting in unexpected silence at the Good Friday meditation in my parents’ church.