Easter

Lent gathers up her cloak of sombre shading

   In her reluctant hands.

Her beauty heightens, fairest in its fading,
   As pensively she stands
Awaiting Easter’s benediction falling,
   Like silver stars at night,
Before she can obey the summons calling
   Her to her upward flight,
Awaiting Easter’s wings that she must borrow
   Ere she can hope to fly—
Those glorious wings that we shall see to-morrow
   Against the far, blue sky.
Has not the purple of her vesture’s lining
   Brought calm and rest to all?
Has her dark robe had naught of golden shining
   Been naught but pleasure’s pall?
Who knows? Perhaps when to the world returning
   In youth’s light joyousness,
We’ll wear some rarer jewels we found burning
   In Lent’s black-bordered dress.
So hand in hand with fitful March she lingers
   To beg the crowning grace
Of lifting with her pure and holy fingers
   The veil from April’s face.
Sweet, rosy April—laughing, sighing, waiting
   Until the gateway swings,
And she and Lent can kiss between the grating
   Of Easter’s tissue wings.
Too brief the bliss—the parting comes with sorrow.
   Good-bye dear Lent, good-bye!
We’ll watch your fading wings outlined to-morrow
   Against the far blue sky.

---Tekahionwake (Emily Pauline Johnson) (1961-1913), Canadian-Mohawk poet, Chautauqua speaker, journalist, storyteller, and Indigenous advocate.

Like Jesus to the Crows

    

that gathered there along his arms,
upon the invitation of a slender limb.
And not oblivious to human violence
perhaps needed rest or needed to offer
the succor of presence, despite the
stiff collar of their feathers, despite
each one being no less the children
of a father who claimed an upper realm.

It is not true they pecked his eyes. Nor
did they consider his wounds
their own. They were neither irreverent
nor quiet. They spoke in the tongues
they knew. They cawed full voiced
and would have released him from his
bindings had their beaks held the power
and had there been time in that place.

Like them, I have sought to comfort and
so be comforted. Like them
I have seen the failure of miracles when
they were most needed. Like Him, I
have called upon those so unlike myself
when my father failed to answer.

--- Vievee Francis, poet, professor, and associate  editor of Cullaloo, from Forest Primeval, 2016

Image: Jesus, by Tamàs Kerti, Hungarian artist and 3-D animator

St. Dismas

 

St. Dismas

I think of you as the prince carried home, lord, lion
With a thorn mane riding on the thumbs
Of hunters in the black air smiling,
So hungry. You’re bleeding. I need to believe in
So I believe in your blood, the long down-rivers of your waist.
Listen, is this how fathers love?
I hear your chest try to escape its ruined field,
I hear how your cheek lolls in the dark
Of your neck. Forgive parts the dry lips, lord,
Can we all live in that murmur, the slight press of tooth
To tongue. Do we speak to them, down there? Spit and split
The moonlight. Your mother’s hands float on our feet like water.
I want that you remember me when you get there,
Take me through the shock, roped by biceps,
Already part way up the sky.
Who dies first. Who dies in the lanternlight swinging.
I begin to love you deep
In the valve your father pinned
In my heart

-- Eve Jones, poet, photographer, and professor at Lindenwood University (MFA UMSL), from Dappled Things journal

39One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." 42Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 43He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."-- Luke 23:39-43

Scripture Reference: Luke 22:14-23:56 (The Passion Narrative), Palm/Passion Sunday, Good Friday; Reign of Christ C Proper 29C

Image: Remember Me, Barbara de Reus Kamma, New Guinean/Dutch, chamois leather and scrap wood, story can be found here at artway.eu.

Taize: "Jesus, Remember Me..."

Her Stations of the Cross

I.

Here mothers move more than others

into Mary’s mourning, each chorus

a soul full of crosses, weighted

with her child dying

continuously in the contemplation

of our contrition.


II. 

That once-upon-a-time angel’s voice

stretching anew her middle-aged womb,

she who once sang Magnify, O Magnify,

when all she screams for now

is mercy in her urgent rebirth

of sorrow.

III. 

When he stumbles,

she cannot fix his fall,

cannot cradle the boyhood

scrapes and bruises bleeding

into crowd-sanctioned murder.

No cock crows; she hears his groans

as if the world’s bones

are splintering within her.

 

IV. 

Besides the tree, he carries

the tears of the one who carried him

beneath her Eve ribs, lifted him

into a world he breathed as good,

gone now into this God-crucified-

as-her-son catastrophe

for salvation’s sake.

V. 

Simon of Cyrene stands close

Understanding too well the two sorrows—

mother and son helpless to comfort the other—

he heaves up and shoulders

the burdens of both,

his back the black tablet

of Moses’ commandments fulfilled

to the jot and tittle.

VI. 

Veronica—eyes swollen

for the Madonna and Child

wrenched from their rightful honor—

lifts her veil to cool the Savior’s pain,

alleviate, however slightly, a mother’s anguish.

VII. 

Thorns gouge the brow she stroked. 

The sweat-caked man that came out of her 

stumbles again. Already,

the sharp nails gnaw her own palms.

VIII. 

Oh, daughters of Jerusalem,

your tears sweep the streets,

wet the weary soles of Mary.

Weep for your own children

forever dashing away from Yahweh.

 

IX. 

Wretched stones that tip her sinless child,

dirt that drives down the innocent son.

His own earth hurts him more each tumble.

Three times he trips,

crashes to the dust we are,

mortal muscles turning their backs

on Man and his Mother.


X. 

Threads twisted by her own fingers,

tugged carefully through cloth:

this is the tunic they rip from him,

fabric tattooed with red;

she remembers his baby body

blood-splattered and matted.

XI. 

Her soul stabbed by the tree

that slays her son. Her heart nailed.

She swears his life spurts

from her barely breathing body.

XII. 

Death is indigo and indelible, 

the Roman sky collapsed and re-scribbled

on the shreds of her memories.

She cannot bear to look upon his face

when breath forgets its maker.

XIII. 

Ten thousand stillborns better

than this: his torso in her arms, 

icon of the inconsolable,

the flesh Pietà with its nails of pain, 

pounding, pounding. 

XIV. 

The hewn tomb seals her grief.

She remembers his first words,

his final prayer. All else rots

within her. They swaddle him,

implant him quickly behind stone. 


-- Marjorie Maddox (1959- ), American poet, editor, children's book and short story author, and teacher,  from Weeknights at the Cathedral (2006)