“The Star Market” by Marie Howe

I love Marie Howe’s poem, “The Star Market.” My grandma went to the Star Market in downtown Lynden years ago, and sometimes they delivered her groceries. The delivery guy would come in the side door and put away her groceries in the kitchen. She was one of those people God loved.

“The Star Market”
by Marie Howe

The people Jesus loved were shopping at The Star Market yesterday.
An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout
breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.

Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and
hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:
shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if The Star Market

had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in
with the rest of them: sour milk, bad meat:
looking for cereal and spring water.

Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car
in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have
been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept

out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands
and knees begging for Mercy.

If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought, I will be healed.
Could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?
— Marie Howe, “The Star Market”