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?