Poems for Lent: Lectionary Year A

Poems for Lent:
Lectionary Year A
by Gerry Hendershot 

In January I attended a Murphy Writing winter poetry get-away week end at Stockton University. Knowing I would be challenged to draft several new poems under the guidance of experienced poets (including Sharon Olds!), I vowed to begin a series based on the Lectionary Gospel lessons for Sundays in Lent.  

​I drafted several poems that week end, and added new drafts in poetry courses I was taking with Kathy Staudt at Wesley Seminary and Jenny Pierson at American University's continuing education program for seniors.  Some of the drafts I shared with adult education classes at the Church of the Pilgrims and Western Presbyterian Church. Recently I have posted some to Face Book.

Below I am sharing the complete set of poems for the six Sundays of Lent (Lectionary Year A).  They are in a variety of forms and styles, in accordance with the guidance given by my teachers.  They may serve to some as a status ​report on my journey as a late-blooming wannabe poet, and to others as an invitation to join the journey.
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​Boy Oh Boy, That’s What I Call Really Famished!
(1st Sunday of Lent)

By Gerry Hendershot
January 15, 2017

             He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.  Matthew 4:1-11.

 There’s a long poem by Robert Pinsky remembering a recently dead poet-friend who was famous for telling Jewish jokes, including the one about the little Rabbi who accepts a challenge to resurrect a dead Chinese man, and spends many hours praying over him, chanting his mystical names, dancing circles around him, and prostrating his body on top of him, all to no effect, and he finally collapses from exhaustion, exclaiming, “Boy oh boy, that’s what I call really dead,” which is what I wanted to exclaim after reading John’s Gospel account of Jesus fasting for forty days (and nights), ending with “he was famished”—a YHWH-sized understatement—but my version would be “Boy oh boy, that’s what I call really famished!” because although you can live for forty days without food, you can’t live for 40 days (and nights) without water, which means that Jesus must have been on a “water fast”—all the clear liquids (water, vegetable broth, pulp-less fruit juice) you can drink, but no solids, and if you’re thinking “Being divine, He could have passed on the liquids too,” forget it, because the early Christians figured out, after debating it for 300 years, that while Jesus was divine, he was also human; but all that’s just prologue to the story I really want to tell, which is about my fast at age 50-something, which goes like this: I was on a water fast for seven days (and nights) and broke it at an Asian fusion restaurant on Capitol Hill, then on the way home, waiting for a train at the Fort Totten Metro Station, I had a syncope (nice word--think “syncopate”-- that means I fainted from low blood pressure), and I didn’t just slump my legs like Raggedy Ann or melt into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West, but toppled, rigid as a Giant Sequoia, flat on my face, after which I came to in the ER at Washington Hospital Center, where they kept me for two nights of observation and tests, one of which was an ultra-sound of the chest cavity, which was interpreted by a secular first-generation Chinese-American doctor, who scolded me when she learned I had been fasting for religious reasons—extending life being more important to her than entering the Kingdom of God--but she discharged me anyway, as an uneducable Christian fanatic, and maybe I was, judging from the selfie I took when I got home showing the whole left side of my face to be a wrinkled bruise ranging through most of the colors of the visible spectrum, which has been an effective reminder—when I needed one—that my fasting days are over, and a warning to you: follow Jesus's Way, in general, but before fasting, consult your doctor.
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How We Transfigured Moses, Elijah, and Jesus
(2nd Sunday of Lent)

 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses
and Elijah, talking with [Jesus]. Mt. 17:3
 
By Gerry Hendershot
January 14, 2017
 
They stood apart, the three of them,
in cabalistic tryst.
They whispered of the darker days
in each of their careers,
like former Presidents they could
not share with other men.
 
“The Pharoah's men were after me,
and I was on the lam.”
“And I hid out from Jezebel,
Baal's priests were on my tail.”
“The Pharisees will capture me,
if I go into town.”
 
Though we disciples strained to hear,
we could not make them out.
Imagining their lofty words
were filled with high intent,
that God Himself spoke through their mouths,
we built them each a tent.
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 He Said, She Said
(3rd Sunday of Lent)
 
By Gerry Hendershot
January 14, 2017
 
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back
to the town and said to the people. . . John 4:28
 
She ran into our town that day
and told with rage about
a man accosting her.
 
“Despite my accent and my dress
he failed to recognize
that I’m Samaritan.
 
“He said he’d give me water but
but what could he draw it with?
He had no bucket there!
 
“He probed into my past love life--
as fresh as he could be--
as much as called me whore!
 
“I told him I know right from wrong,
and said that  ‘No’ means ‘No,’
then turned my back and ran!”
 
We took her word for it, but then
went out to meet this man,
and knew him for himself.
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Marbles
(4th Sunday of Lent)
 
By Gerry Hendershot
April 2, 2017
 
            He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva . . . John 9: 6
 
I take a knee beside the marbles ring--
my Ma will yell at me about the stain.
With fingers chapped by cold of early spring,
I probe the surface, soft from last night's rain.
In cruciform the mibs at center lie--
twelve aggie prizes, multi-colored hoard.
We're playing keepers here--it's do or die.
A whispered prayer I say unto the Lord;
for extra luck I spit upon the clay.
I knuckle down, my taw in tension set.
I take my aim; I hold my breath . . . and play!
Now physics rules our destiny—and yet,
I sense some purpose in infinity
will have its say, will work its way, through me.
 
 [About this poem.  "Marbles" is played with spheres (marbles) made of stone or glass and about 0.5" to 1.0" in diameter.  "Mibs" are target marbles arranged at the center of a 6' to 10' circular "ring" drawn on smooth, flat ground.  A "taw" is a "shooter" marble shot from outside the ring toward the mibs.  "Aggie" is short for agate or agate-like material from which some marbles are made.  Mibs knocked out of the ring by a taw score points.  If playing "for keeps," the displaced marbles are kept by the person whose shooter knocked them out.  The person shooting must have at least one knuckle touching the ground, called "knuckling down."  Expert players hold the shooter in tension between the curved tips of the thumb and index finger, then propel it by thrusting the thumb forward.  Before shooting, players often say a word or make a gesture for good luck.]
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Two Days
(5th Sunday of Lent)
 
By Gerry Hendershot
April 1, 2017
 
Having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days
longer in the place where he was . . . John 11: 6
 
My father died of a heart attack.
I was thousands of miles away
on an airplane flying east toward the States
enroute to a new duty station.
 
My mother died in a nursing home.
I was thousands of miles away
on an airplane flying west toward the States,
completing a so-called business trip.
 
My dear wife died in our living room
just a few steps from where I stood in
the kitchen making an omelet for
our daughter, beside the hospice bed.
 
Does it matter when a loved one dies
if we're by their side or two days away?
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Do Rabbits Scream?
(Liturgy of the Passion,
6th Sunday of Lent)
 
by Gerry Hendershot
April 1, 2017
 
            "Why have you forsaken me?  Matthew 27: 46
 
Below the song I hear
the sacrificial cries.
 
(Alone, in pain, he cried,
Oh why, my God, oh why?)
 
At dawn a dog's low growl,
an ice-cold child-like scream.
 
Caught rabbit, dying now,
in dying finds true voice.
  
[About this poem.  One theory is that song began to mask the cries of sacrificial victims.  Listening to music before dawn, I thought I heard screams beneath it, then realized they came from outside, where a neighbor's dog had caught a rabbit.  When preyed upon, rabbits scream.]
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