Sunday School

Each week the teacher gave us 
something to be grateful for, 
for we saw 
with perfect pity,  
even smugness, 
certainly relief, 
the conspicuous thing about him, 
his missing right arm— 
the urgent implication of a lesson. 
We saw the cross he had to bear, 
the visual aid of it, 
the shrunken, shriveling stump 
we imagined, 
a weight beneath his pinned-up sleeve.  
The loss was punctuated 
by his whole and useful left arm, 
its hand deftly, 
proudly even, 
holding notes or hanging loosely  
from his shoulder. 
One Sunday he used the phantom arm 
as a metaphor, telling how, 
as a foolish teen, he’d lost it waterskiing, 
how he’d cast aside the rules 
allowing the rope 
to twist itself around his upper arm 
like a string tied taut 
around a baby tooth to rip it 
permanently away. 
After his story— 
he must have wanted this— 
we rose above our ferocious pity, 
rose, if just a little, into empathy. 
But as resolve so often goes, 
some of us began to envy  
his rise along the learning curve 
and the distraction 
his missing arm offered. 
We were young, you see, 
and anxious, 
our crosses yet unknown.