Children sow the sidewalk
with painted rocks wearing
hearts and flowers, as though
faith could irrigate the earth with hope.
I sow my windowsill with birdseed,
a bag to feed a multitude,
though few take up the offer;
the chickadee and the sparrow,
confident of their Creator’s eye,
bolder than most stop by.
Sometimes I imagine that
instead of rolling the stone away
he turned it into bread for the birds
to swarm and peck and carry it
crumb by crumb to feed their young,
open-mouthed and shrill,
laughing at the devil.
The Revd Rosalind C Hughes is Rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio, and author of A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing (April 2020, Upper Room Books). The germ of this poem first appeared as “Rolling stone” on the blog over the water at rosalindhughes.com.