Could it be him playing with gusto
in a circle of Irish musicians
doing their gig by the corner window?

I watch fascinated until he
tucks the fiddle under an arm,
rises and walks toward me.

“Jesus Christ! Can that be you?”
He hesitates. “Yes, we met near the Vatican
a few years ago at the Bar Blu.”

He joins me for brown ale to say
how close Holy Week is
this year to St. Patrick’s Day.

“Ah, Friend, with all the child abuse,
a dark time for Ireland’s church—
plus Mid-East violence on the loose.”

“Yes, Master, I see the tragic connection,
yet what about Easter,
any hope in the Resurrection?

“Well, religions reveled in mythic theology
when folk were ignorant of evolution
and turned imagination into history.”

“Yet, Master Jesus, so much sin and separation,
how do we reconnect with salvation?”
He leans back, sips his beer,

and points toward the street. “See that homeless person
with her worldly possessions in a shopping cart?
Let’s bring her warm nachos and a fiddled chanson.”