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.

John 20:29

(“How Happy Are Those Who Believe Without Seeing Me!”)

And so tonight the dark
rolls over me, and my soul sighs,
and I let the effects
settle and stay upon me,
because there is
naught to do otherwise,
except to watch as
do sentinels for daybreak,^*
when God’s face over
my doubt rises.

Gethsemane

(“Not My Will but Your Will Be Done”) *

…Alone now,
suffocatingly alone,
squeezing Jesus’ chest but
soon scourging every inch of His back,
Jesus’ temptation at its most
vulnerable peak,
nothing but the sounds of
His disciples asleep,
critically unable their lids to lift
and eyes open to keep,
the penultimate test of His will,
His followers blending
and fading invisibly into the
utter blackness of
the night, becoming part
of the stark silence
of immense isolation
enclothing Him, no more
Voice from the heavens as at the
rapture of the Baptism
on the Jordan, or when
boomed the Majesty of His
Father at the glorious
Transfiguration on
Mount Tabor, just Jesus’
agonized pleas in a
pool of red in the sweat
of His blood, and the
dawning knowledge His Father
had determined there
would be no remitting of the
nails and terrors of
Golgotha’s morning
Cross…

Winter

Winter Prayer

O Lord, please close the
eyes and ears of my soul to mammon’s
every whisper and murmur.
How can I mirror Your perfect image
and likeness, if behind
my own rolled stone lies my
flesh as master?

Winter Writing

And thus, I return to my
writing, after a hiatus in autumn
lasting into winter, a soul
appearing adrift amongst the lost…
but maybe never far gone,
but rather more like Saint Paul –
restored at cold night to my
bridled, waiting horse.