Pomegranates and Children

Pomegranates and Children

Lindsey Priest

And all those who heard him were astounded
at His understanding and all His answers.
When His parents heard… they were astonished.
Luke 2:47-48

Jewels, you say between giggles to the song each glowing bead
of fruit plays as they fall in plinks against our battered tin bowl.

I thought I’d paid too much for food you might not eat and found
I’d paid too little to have you dig up rubies in this old mind.

I’d been asking for what I kept calling a miracle, God’s audible
voice assuring me I did the good thing, turning my body into a door

for you to walk through. You are more than an answer.
You are giving out gems for lunch. I’d forgotten God

commanded Moses to weave blue, purple too, oh, and scarlet
pomegranates all around the hem of the high priestly robes.

Between each pomegranate a bell hung and sounded a signal
that God’s man was still alive to offer God’s people’s sacrifice.
Bells to hear or not to hear, but pomegranates? For whom to see?

Why such decoration? Why all of this needless beauty?

Your giggling cuts a jingle through the once quiet rooms of my
heart. You eat handfuls of berries I’d forgotten were holy, and use stained
fingers to draw, Jesus only knows what, on the tray between us. What you say
is momma.

Son, one thing you keep offering, you take everything
we’ve imagined plain, material, pick it up between certain fingers

and name it precious, announcing their song in our ears till our eyes
open from the alarm and we’re loosed from our aweless daze.

“Son, why have you treated us like this,” teaching us
what we never knew our lives depended on us remembering?

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Lindsey Priest
Poet & Mother

Lindsey is a wife and mother. She studied Writing and Biblical Literature at a small university nearly a decade ago. She writes in the early morning while the rest of the house is asleep. She spends her free time reading with her young sons or gardening with her husband.

Painting by Dante Gabriel Rosetti