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 © 2018 Charles Rafferty All rights reserved
from Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party
Mayapple Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission