Waiting For Miracles
Poem by Matthew de Lacey Davidson
I once heard a sermon
from a Catholic Priest
in Toronto
he said that
miracles are read about
in the Christian bible
but that we fail
to see
the real miracles of life
like when he was in South America and
he saw
poor, small, dirty-faced boy-children
begging in the streets
and they would get just enough money to buy
a tiny banana about a quarter of the size of
a little boy’s hand
and all of them would,
without thinking,
divide it in four and split it amongst themselves
and that this was a far greater miracle
than walking on water
and he suggested that maybe
we in North America
could all live more simply
so that
others could simply live
and that
we could easily survive without
our second car, our third swimming pool, our fourth television set
and all the parishioners
(the vast majority of whom were extremely privileged)
dropped their jaws
and were shocked at the mere suggestion
that we should be less materialistic
and in a thunderclap
I knew that this man
loved G-d so much
that he would risk
losing his job
to tell the truth
