The Table

Allowed entry and denied a place to eat.

Tell me, Is a welcome that denies hunger a welcome?

She did not feast at a table of overflowing abundance

of yellow tangerines and mangoes

red berries and creamy cheese

of olives and wine and crusty bread

of color upon color

and grace upon grace.

Hungry she left.

Alone she wept.

And the Christ in her cries out to the Christ them-

‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

Shannon Johnston