Poem | On a Cardinal Climbing Down a Manhole to Restore Power to 400 Homeless People

Photo by Jimmy Ofisia on Unsplash

 

ON A CARDINAL CLIMBING DOWN A MANHOLE TO RESTORE POWER TO 400 HOMELESS PEOPLE

We were almost used
To living in the dark,
To being powerless,

That day you quietly
Pulled the lid off the sky
Of a world below

And snuck down, strange
Inside that stale air,
To flip the switch,

Subverting power structures,
Sparking gasps of joy
In us who could not pay

That suffocating debt,
Your dirtied hands declaring,
“Let there be light.”

Published in the April 2020 issue: 
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Michael Stalcup is a Thai-American missionary living in Bangkok,Thailand. His poetry has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Faithfully Magazine, First Things, Inheritance Magazine, Poets Reading the News, and elsewhere. You can find more of his work at www.michaelstalcup.com.

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