Poem

The Prodigal’s Brother

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If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. ………….—Genesis 4:7

 

Faithful to hard work more than any other, you think for all that good you’re penalized. You judge God even as you do your brother, and that’s where only half the evil lies.

The other half: you think you rate a prize for staying home for years of humble bother. You toiled, did your math, and studied wise men’s sayings from the scriptures and your father.

You cry: “I never got a goat for all my tries. He slept with sluts, and now he’s served by mother a feast with friends. For all his wicked highs I gave my all to lows of cattle, shoveling fodder

by sweat of my brow, and something in me dies to share that no one knows my sacrifice.”