A Poem for Lent...
Image credit: keziaominde.wordpress.com
PACES OF A LAMB
"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
pyx 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 1940s
–
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
"Behold the Lamb...poetically!"
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