​St. Jude in the Common Era, by Betsy Mars

St. Jude by the Dumpster, by Anne Smith (USA) contemporary. Click on image for artist site.

​St. Jude in the Common Era
 
Who knows how or where 
they might appear
at a roadside stop on the Mass Turnpike, 
lending a hand with a jack and a spare.
Or as a stranger running to a platform 
beside a train track with a sack of pastries and fruit
for three young travelers to stave off hunger
on their journey. An unknown neighbour who calls 
about the missing cat months after he reappeared, 
or even that shuffling figure I avoid on the street--
the one muttering, the one who stinks from fishing 
in the rotting lake of the dumpster.
Who am I to preach, raised by atheists and Jews, 
and yet I read Of Human Bondage and know, 
there but for grace go I, and so I now seek angels 
anywhere on the ground, though never in the sky.

Betsy Mars

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled Mapping Our Future Selves.