Jesus's Brother
       

It was difficult living
with that relentless perfection.
He wouldn't tell me

how the water turned
to wine, and he never did it
for me either—only

for strangers, only for a crowd.
I remember him
as someone who was always leaving

to work his magic"
in the streets—among the men
who clearly hated him, the women

who somehow didn't.
He was a lamp that lit my failings.
He showed me the cracks

in everything I thought and taught me
to fill them with the music
of his mystery, which he sang

in a key beyond my range,
and which everyone around me
kept trying to hum.

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Copyright © 2016 Charles Rafferty All rights reserved
from the Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission