Report from the Field
Report from the Field
Brad Davis
It had taken some sensitive negotiating,
but the invitation was generous:
a fully subsidized, three-day, lakeside retreat
with lodging and meals provided.
Three days with the one
some were already calling “The Teacher.”
And they’d have him all to themselves, his words
and reputation as a healer
the main draw.
On the day of,
synagogue elders from every village
and town and Jerusalem too
descended on the site,
and not one spare room in Capernaum
went unfilled.
No one could remember a gathering like it,
and though the benefactor’s house
was large, the number of retreatants was greater
than expected. Even important latecomers,
unable to squeeze in, stood
with recent seminary grads at open
windows and doors, straining to hear the Teacher teach
then catch his answers during the Q&A.
I had been assigned by a local news outlet
to cover the event –
what many were hoping would be
a rabbinic love fest of sorts,
something to help the Teacher gain traction
among the wider community of religious leaders
and expand his fan base well beyond
the sick and poor
who were known to swarm him.
But on the afternoon of the second day,
a cell of ragged interlopers,
impatient for the Teacher’s attention,
removed tiles from the benefactor’s roof
and lowered a cripple
not ten feet from where the Teacher sat teaching.
Needless to say, the room fell silent –
half astonished at the interlopers’ chutzpah,
half thrilled that they might witness a healing up close –
when the Teacher went off script.
I am not permitted to report what he said.
Suffice it to say, he blasphemed,
and the interlopers got more than what they came for.
And the once-in-a-lifetime gathering of rabbis
and other synagogue leaders
ground to a sudden halt.
And by sunset, lakeside Capernaum became a ghost town.
It would be an understatement to assert
the Teacher’s misstep
proved disastrous to his cause.
Unless one happened to stick around after
the elite’s hasty dispersal
to witness their displacement
by a steady trickle of outcasts who,
having overheard from those storming off
what the Teacher did and said,
limped nervously onto the benefactor’s fabulous property,
surrounded the large house,
and waited there quietly throughout the night
for the Teacher to emerge.
I close my report by noting the latter number were twice the former.
Brad Davis
Poet & Author
Brad has been previously published in The Paris Review, Poetry & Image
Photography by Lina Verovaya