Decades at each others’ throats

playfully,

like two pups from a single womb,

showing teeth,

biting ears,

balled up together

rolling in the opposite direction as the world.

He, like his namesake  king,

once had riches;

she, like the southern queen,

brought to him her beauty;

one night–all too biblically–

ten strong men tied them down

and made off with everything

in a moveable feast of injustice.

What the thieves didn’t find

was the bit of gold stashed between

the reproductive ribs of these two

ancient neighbours of Eden.

Good Friday morning

before the solemn, curtain-splitting clouds

of the afternoon foul up the weather,

they’re out drying maize and coffee

on the sunny patch of asphalt, their plain of Canaan.

In a wobbly world that has gone Sodom,

these two elfish Abrahams

keep the old art of welcome alive.

God bless their crops, their offspring,

their land, their smiles.

Who these days is left

to sing of them in psalms of thanksgiving?