For Franklin

Poetry

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This is mercy:
to have a friend
who remembers you not
for the ways you have failed
but for the beauty in your hands.
A friend who sees your able fingers
sand, measure and saw as he stands
before the court on your behalf.
“It was the finest towel rack
Sarasota High School had ever seen,”
he tells the judge.
As if towel racks matter.
As if a single act of goodness
could wipe out all your sins,
forty years later.
This is mercy.
Do it again, Dink.
Wherever you are,
in prison or out,
find wood and build.

Jennifer Halteman Schrock attends Berkey Avenue Mennonite Fellowship in Goshen, Ind.

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