Last Suppers

Last evening’s catered meal 
delivered on rented china plates 
was lovely but lacking 
the mysterious ingredient 
of old church basement suppers 
in slightly musty parish halls 
with their unhealthy menus 
of ham loaf or baked steak, 
scalloped potatoes (always), 
boiled canned green beans— 
not metal cans, but bottled 
beans put up by the women 
and grown by their men— 
creamy cole slaw (always), 
green jello with grated carrot 
or crushed pineapple, 
all eaten on folding tables 
set up by the husbands 
or teenaged boys hoping 
to impress girls waiting 
to serve these hefty meals 
on indestructible crockery, 
coffee in thick rimmed cups. 
All this is only the memory 
of gastronomically un-PC 
elders raised in fellowship halls 
that did not lack the flavor 
or labor of personalized love, 
meals echoing what we heard 
upstairs in the sanctuary, 
where we, the family, 
His Body, gathered 
to do this in remembrance.