On Wednesday

It was on the Wednesday

that they called him a wasteful person.

The place smelled like

the perfume department of a big store.

It was as if

somebody had bumped an elbow against a bottle

and sent it crashing to the floor,

setting of the most expensive stink bomb on earth.

But it happened in a house, not a shop.

And the woman who broke the bottle

was no casual afternoon shopper.

She was the poorest of the poor,

giving away the only precious thing she had.

And he sat still

while she poured the liquid all over his head…

as unnecessary as aftershave

on a full crop of hair and a bearded chin.

And those who smelled it, and those who saw it,

and those who remembered

that he was against extravagance,

called him a wasteful person.

They forgot that he also was the poorest of the poor.

And they who had much

and who had given him nothing,

objected to a pauper giving him everything.

Jealousy was in the air when a poor woman’s generosity

became an embarrassment to their tight-fistedness…

That was on the Wednesday,

when they called him a wasteful person.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group