Joppa Was First

a poem

Joppa Was First

I met her on a bus. I had arranged myself
to be left alone, but she sat beside me
and started in with questions. I don’t remember
the first one. I only remember answering more
than I’d expected to, then another
…and another, until whatever I’d been saving
myself for seemed less important. By the time
we’d reached Joppa, I was no longer keeping
to myself.

Joppa was first, I think. There was sea,
and the old story: Peter hungry at noon,
a sheet lowered by its corners, and all those creatures
he’d spent his lifetime knowing what to call.

He says surely not to the one he calls Lord.
While he’s still trying to understand,
3 men stand already at the gate.

I don’t remember what she said in Joppa.
Only how she listened…how easily
she became interested in whoever happened
to be beside her. All week she seemed to be
finding out who people were.

We got back on the bus and went onwards
to the next place—and the next. There were people
on that bus I came to love
—still do.

At Joppa, I remember
no objections.

Later, when they questioned Peter
about the house he’d entered,
he started in the beginning: the roof,
the hunger, the sheet, the men at the gate +
the road to Caesarea. He told them what happened
in that house while he was still speaking.

I’m pondering that still—
Peter did not leave out
his surely not.

I am learning to be careful
what I call a thing.

For years the animals were what I remembered.

Now I keep thinking of that man
in that other city…praying,

his name already spoken,
his prayers already heard,

while Peter was still
making up his mind.

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