Spent
by Harold J. Recinos
Harold J. Recinos is professor of Church and Society at Perkins School of Theology. The son of a Guatemalan father and Puerto Rican mother, he was abandoned as a twelve-year-old boy to New York City streets and, after four years of homelessness, was taken into a Presbyterian family’s home and helped to return to school. His recent publications include Good News from the Barrio: Prophetic Witness for the Church (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006) and Jesus in the Hispanic Community: Images of Christ from Theology to Popular Religion, with Hugo Magallanes (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009). His poems have been featured in Weavings, Anglican Theological Review, Sojourners, The Other Side, and Anabaptist Witness, among others. A collection of poems, Voices on the Corner, was published by Wipf and Stock Publications.
around the hips of a new day
yesterday’s sadness hangs
like a painting seen behind
tinted glass for everyone to
get. the illness that knives us,
the preacher’s words absent of
scraps of holy glimmer, the slow
relief making partners with a
family’s dread, this incessant
absurd feeling that the sky will
burn before our mute deity in
this ruin comes, haunt me. still,
I keep watch for the grandeur of
God to bend down and whisper in
our tear drenched ears, life is
never, never spent.
Harold J. Recinos is professor of Church and Society at Perkins School of Theology. The son of a Guatemalan father and Puerto Rican mother, he was abandoned as a twelve-year-old boy to New York City streets and, after four years of homelessness, was taken into a Presbyterian family’s home and helped to return to school. His recent publications include Good News from the Barrio: Prophetic Witness for the Church (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006) and Jesus in the Hispanic Community: Images of Christ from Theology to Popular Religion, with Hugo Magallanes (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009). His poems have been featured in Weavings, Anglican Theological Review, Sojourners, The Other Side, and Anabaptist Witness, among others. A collection of poems, Voices on the Corner, was published by Wipf and Stock Publications.
around the hips of a new day
yesterday’s sadness hangs
like a painting seen behind
tinted glass for everyone to
get. the illness that knives us,
the preacher’s words absent of
scraps of holy glimmer, the slow
relief making partners with a
family’s dread, this incessant
absurd feeling that the sky will
burn before our mute deity in
this ruin comes, haunt me. still,
I keep watch for the grandeur of
God to bend down and whisper in
our tear drenched ears, life is
never, never spent.
