Women At Well

[old poem, now with new and improved punctuation]

it was hot,
the kind of hot that made sitting in the shade
complaining about the heat with no shirt on and
sucking on a High Life
a full day.

the kind of heat they tell geriatrics
and small children to avoid.
the kind of heat that leads to day dreams
of sleeping in a king size bed of Otterpops.

if He had driven out here,
there would be marks on His legs
from where he peeled them off
of vinyl seats.

this was the middle nowhere,
twelve miles from the nearest inn
slurpees still a couple millennia away.

He needed a drink.

right now,
He wished he didn’t live in a desert
He wondered why he had taken up the company
of so many slack jawed yokels
blue collar tools with small vocabularies.

they told Him to wait
apparently they forgot
who the leader of their operation was
he was the Hannibal to their A-team.
a fact they'd do well to remember.

they told Him to wait
because apparently there was
A woman of ill repute
A lady with loose morals

as if He would be embarrassed.
they were an uppity bunch,

if the son of Man was thirsty
the son of Man was going to get a drink,
even if the well was in the middle of a brothel
frequented by Hitler, Ted Bundy, Nero
and the defensive line of the 1985 Bears.

it was a hot day and He was thirsty
He was going to get a drink of water.