Magpie Musing

Random diary entries from a working priest:

‘You’

she spits at me from her crow clothes,

all black

and torn

and crumpled cloth.

 

‘You, who are you

You homeless?’

 

I have come up to her as she sits 

muttering on the bench 

out the front of the church

I have knelt down next to her and the group of men,

who are always there, 

to say g’day, 

pass the endless time of day when you have  (literally ) 

nowhere to go 

and nowhere else to be.

 

The men greet me with ‘Heys’ and gaps toothed smiles,

baseball caps on backwards

and tattoos all faded on their faces.

‘Hey ‘

they say

they are happy to see me

But this woman…

 

‘You

You, who are you

You homeless?’

 

‘No’

I respond,

‘no, I mean I could be (there but for the grace of god) but I’m not…

I’m the minister’ Minister!

‘Hah, you are not, you look like teenager, your hair, it is mess,

and you in jeans, you homeless’.

 

I brave her scorn and sit next to her on the bench

The men wander off, and we sit

on International Women’s Day, 

and she berates me for my fashion.

 

Finally

I open the church, go in and get my alb and stole

I put them on, in front of her

‘Ta da I say

told you so’

I say.

 

Finally –

she smiles.

 

‘Yes, yes, now you are priest’

She says. ‘You should wear that

All day and then we will know who you are.’

 

Alex