byways

by Zach Kincaid

By way of a crazy-eyed Abram who saw beyond the stars,
through the whored veil of Tamar who turned a trick on Judah,
up Rahab’s red sash and hiding atop the lonely Jericho room,
embraced by Ruth’s open arms and desperate hold,
Onto the patio where nude women bathe and generals get killed,
tear-jerked, but dancing, with David, stripped and cut down,
inside new temples beside the keeper of 300 prostitutes,
huddled with Hezekiah during the darkest Jerusalem night,
revived by Josiah who banished Baal and ushered in God’s law,
carried on the stony path of Israel’s returned exiles…

to an unlikely recipient–a teenager wildly in love,
down the streets in some slopped-up animal cave,
by way of a virgin womb, through water and blood…
Jesus, Savior, Christ the Lord
falls into the warm hands of Joseph, and suckles Mary.

When Abraham’s stars melt into one,
swing low, swing low, to the fragile, almighty God,
wrapped up, ripped out onto a lonely landscape,
a garden recycled–beat up but in hopes for one last try.

May our eyes see your salvation in the highways and byways
(however spread thin it is),
and may our hands scoop it up and work it out.