Holy Saturday: A Poem

When the wretched sun poured

raw red light over the hanging trees,

did Peter rise with swollen lids,

awakened by the rooster’s morning cry?

Could Magdalene bear the light touch

of tears tracing her cheeks, recalling

how she knelt and washed his feet with her weeping?

Did Nicodemus’ hands shake as he slit

the Passover lamb’s soft throat?

Did Mary parse her heart’s strange treasures, and

did the memories give answer to her loss--

how shepherds and kings bowed to her baby,

how she hid him in Egypt from Herod’s soldiers,

how she lost him for three days in the Holy City--

and did she pray as one bereaved parent to another?

Even Thomas, mid the breathless joy

of the Good News, grasped his grief’s dark anchor

and for a heavy week saw nothing

until he saw his Rabbi’s wounds, felt nothing

until he touched the open flesh.

In the heaviness of heart and eye and limb,

the inexorable weeping, or barren lack,

Christ is there too, forsaken;

The Father is sonless for a long, dark Sabbath.

But wait for the morning! For with the dawn–