Even at Sunset, You Show Me the Passion of Your Shroud

John 19:38-42

A complete silence
settles, and utter stillness darkens
my awe, and Our Lord from
His Cross is being taken down, and
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus
are hurrying to wrap Him with
perfumed spices…before
turns into blood-red
the night’s burial cloth.

You

Plantain Lily

You whisper,
e’en lighter than a
desert vesper.
You bleat in the meekest
voice, Your chords
in the sheepfold
mercifully ne’er hoarse.
You disperse the
sand eddies swirling in my
soul, and in dry
crags and hollows,
I learn my loneliness is
not alone.

Divine Wisdom

“Thus at last you will find rest in her,
and she will become your joy”
Sirach 6:27-31

Upon a hosta’s
shoulders in gratitude a
daylily rests, and
stretches out without fear
her stalk – no longer
worried about
how anyone would
perceive her face,
gifted by Beauty as she
was at Genesis’ first
glint of Dawn.

Equines

To think, lo aft all
these millennia, they still
patiently await their
Savior’s return, horses, gathered
as they are at the shoreline
of His heavenly carpet,
just as they were at
the Bethlehem stable and
amongst the crowd of
flowing, colorful robes,
when Jesus whispered
His Beatitudes at
the Sermon on the Mount.
There was something
special about Him.
He listened to them, and
when He spoke, even
at ease were placed the
wildest tides. And
so now they wait…At first
they thought His
Second Coming would
be imminent, but that was
before they realized
He was not bound by simple
space and time. The
sand grains gave testament
and final clues to this –
once finest, granite rock they
incredibly stood, sheer
slabs of almighty might, but now
in their humbleness
reduced to infinitesimal
specks…content to be imprinted
on the bottoms of each
horse’s hooves.

Ode to a Ginkgo’s Leaves

O yellow, sometimes e’en
gold, but with a tinge of slightest green,
undulating before my gaze,
each leaf’s changing
as the sun o’er my shoulder
leans, o you, dear leaves, doth arrest
me in my tracks, because
there is something
about your countenance,
which makes me believe you once
cradled my Savior’s
Shadow as He walked past.