Goodbye

I said goodbye to Jesus the other day.
He’d been trimming the hedges
with an electric saw nearly as long as his arm,
drawing them into the sort of neat lines
people like to see from the street.

He worked steadily in the heat,
hat pulled down,
sweat darkening the back of his shirt,
stopping now and then
to look along the hedge for anything missed.

I put on my helmet,
wheeled the bike down the drive,
and raised a hand as I passed.

He glanced up and nodded—
the quick professional gesture
of someone finishing a job.

It occurred to me as I rode away
how long I’d believed
in another Jesus entirely:

the quiet one from church windows
moving through vineyards and fields,
speaking of branches and fruit,
patient with the wilderness in people.

Someone who trimmed our lives
into something orderly,
something that made sense
from a distance.

But the morning was plain enough—
traffic somewhere beyond the houses,
a dog barking,
sunlight lying hard on the lawns.

Behind me the saw started again,
its thin mechanical whine
floating down the street.

And I realized, somewhere near the corner,
that the man working in my yard
was the only Jesus left—

a gardener among thorns,
doing careful work
for an hourly rate—

while the other one,
the one who tended souls and vineyards,

had quietly stopped existing
some years before
without my quite noticing.

The hedge would grow back soon enough.