Sunday Poem #5: Excess

A poem for a heavy Holy Week

Happy Sunday, friends. Here’s a poem for Holy Week.

The Present Moment by Kreg Yengst

Excess

She wept like she knew
what was coming, as she shook
every drop of her life savings
from an alabaster flask,
when just a little would do.

She poured, touched, loved
like one who’s seen death
but seen it reversed too,
when her beloved brother
walked from the grave.

Can you blame them all for wondering
if maybe she should have sold it,
if all of this excess was a waste?
It’s reasonable to wonder —

Just as it’s reasonable to gaze
at a world of too much
	stars and seashells,
	plants and people,
	colors and creatures
and ask if this expanding universe
could stand to be more frugal.

Maybe it’s better
to spend it all,
to let spikenard
overflow and fill
every corner of the room,
a lingering scent
to give comfort and courage
every step to the grave.

---

This week has been heavy. I am mourning alongside my friends in Nashville, a city I dearly love. I am angry that we’re here again, picking up the pieces after yet another mass shooting. I am sick of the violence and the grief and the “well, thoughts and prayers, ‘cause we can’t do anything about it” attitudes.

It feels strange, a little wrong to write about anything else. But I’m re-reading this poem I already planned to share, and somehow… it fits, I guess.

This is another collaboration.

Lore Wilbert

, a friend and fantastic writer¹, put together a small poetry collection as a pre-release bonus for her book Handle With Care. She asked each poet to take a story from Scripture that connected somehow to Jesus and touch, and I was honored to contribute this reflection.

“Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me… When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial.” - Matt 26:10

That’s all. Perhaps it’s enough to let the poem stand on its own.

1. If you aren’t reading her Substack Sayable, please please go remedy that.