"...as a lamb before its shearer is silent..."

THE BOLOGNA MAKER

"He was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth." Isaiah 53:7 N.I.V.

 

Father Bob drained the cup

and replaced the cover

on the brass pix of Hosts.

Communion over

the two old friends

settled back

in their kitchen chairs

 

A natural storyteller

Leo began to reminisce

about Mr. Sattel

his neighbor in Roselle Park

in the 1940's –

the best bologna maker

at the pork store nearby

 

Eventually the neighbor

purchased some farmland

and moved to Penn's Grove

where he built a slaughterhouse

Leo spent time there

the summer between grammar

and high school

 

He had watched Mr. Sattel subdue

fat squealing hogs

and tenacious bulls

Saw him and his helpers

pull resisting livestock

by a rope fed through a nose ring

to another ring in the floor

where struggling animals

were systematically

slaughtered

one at a time

 

Mr. Sattel grew hardened

even provoked to anger

by the tugging and digging in of hooves

amid the ominous odor of blood

which roused the desperate instinct

against death –

 

The grueling labor of slaughter

left him no energy for grief

 

but his steel eyes glazed over

one muggy afternoon

when he told Leo,

 

"I did a lamb once.

 

It walked right alongside me

up the ramp.

 

I'll never

do it

again."

 

 

An edgy silence followed –

silent as paces of a lamb

 

 

There they sat, two white-haired friends

washed by the shed blood

of One Docile Lamb

Who walked Calvary's ramp

 

two thousand years ago

 

Maude Carolan

Lent begins this week.