P.N. Grata - Vegeterians

In my Bran Buds this morning there appeared to me
an unmistakable pointillist depiction of the infant Christ.
The soft down of his newborn head, the folds in his swaddling,
the straws of hay that make up his bed, all perfectly arranged
around the white skim milk of his pure, otherworldly flesh. I am always
in awe of the impossibility, the unreality of babies, so beautiful, stupid and new!

That evening for dinner I seared a delicious tuna steak and
ate it with asparagus and wild rice with mushrooms and
before I had taken the first bite an image of the crucified
Christ materialized-a green crucifix from the intersection
of two sprigs of asparagus, the grease from the brown, buttered
mushrooms his bleeding stigmata, his bowed head weeping
beneath a crown of thorns in the tuna steak and both Marys
perfectly distinguished in their respective and exquisitely
individuated agony in the rice.

I thought of vegetarians. Lately they have stopped trying to
convert the rest of us. They are like Christ, I thought: they suffer
in solitude, deny their own flesh, for the whole world's sake.
The sin-adoring, self-devouring rest of the world, which
includes you and me, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

P.N. Grata

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/vegeterians/