A history lesson

After Acts 7:1-60

The charges are false,

the witnesses paid to lie,

and the judges ask

only one question

a simple question:

Is this so?

A simple if long answer

to a simple if short question,

but a simple if long answer

to turn the falsity and lies

on their heads and reverse

the charges to present

mirrors to the judges.

And the answer moves

backward fifteen hundred

years, back to the man

first called to the land.

And it makes perfect sense:

this is where the story begins,

this is the seminal event,

the backdrop to the corruption

of the law called this trial.

And what he implies,

and what he says in this lesson,

this recitation, of shared history,

is to make a point, the point:

what they are doing in this trial

is what they have always done.

Photograph by Tanner Mardis via Unsplash. Used with permission.