The roofers did not come today

It is Sunday

I know where they are.

 

I saw them in my sleep

Mounting a polished wooden platform

From many directions

Wearing their jeans,

T-shirts,

Tossing cigarettes in the weeds.

 

They took their places

Before a neatly crafted wooden podium

Unfinished, politely weathered,

Behind which stood my father

Wearing his carpenter’s pants

And hat,

A short pencil behind his ear.

 

As he looked up the men began to stretch

Arms lifted to the sky

And he said in his old man’s voice,

“Jesus was a carpenter,”

 

And they repeated

“Jesus was a carpenter.”