…and how does he decide,
when his “hour has not yet come” for years,
that right now, this little farmyard party
should be the occasion, finally,
of his first public sign,
the back hall transformation
of water into wine? What was it that told him? 
There’s a suggestion he was goaded
by an over-anxious mother,
ambitious for what she saw in him. 
But couldn’t it also have been the insufficiency
of even an all-night wedding feast
to the heart-stab, the grief-flood, the incommensurability
of the voice that whispered—out of the blue—
that even he, too, is worthy? Past sixty,
my light still under its bushel,
I need to get clear, and soon.