will you go leaping?
will you sing?
will you, as so many
sleep, and keep on sleeping?

did Jesus in gethsemane
get mad enough to kick
stones, tear branches
pummel the earth
to punish the sky?

in artists’ renderings
he sits, or kneels
his long hair brushed
and raises limpid eyes
his passion all gentility

but if you love this world
and have but one more feast
brought to this gate by
your fierce fuck you to falsity
you who have hurled tables before

wouldn’t you raven?
wouldn’t you laugh?
cover your rage and fear
by tearing the bread?

throw this staff of life
at your frustratingly weak
companions, shouting:
Take this, all of you!
they might as well be eating you.

wouldn’t you devour
every flavour you’ll never
freely eat again, savour
your teeth, your throat, your belly?
awestruck by this body built of bread.

then drink deep, tasting
every summer, all the work
of human hands, the laughter
of grape stomping girls
alchemy and patience in the jug

drunken, would you claim it?
This is my blood! Drink it!
running away won’t help
better to live it up, once more
sate yourself, sing with friends
‘til at the knock upon the door
you rise from the repast, aghast
at last.

did you go quietly?are you
content with immortality?
did you weep for the last
of the bread and the wine?
or close your will tight around
that seed impulse, breathe
surrender to the One Song
having sung with all your might?

Today’s prompt gave me a moment of frustration. I’ve been feeling very like exploring the Christian side of my heritage. Easter has always been my favourite holiday, the one that resonates with my spirit and this world as it reveals itself to me.

But ‘repast aghast at last’ suggests Suessian wordplay, and that’s pretty irresistible. So, in the mood for sombre on this Good Friday, and given a jokey phrase? I had to work a bit to get the phrase in. I hope it doesn’t clunk.  And oddly, this phrase I disliked on sight has opened up a poem that pleases me. My mom’s spirit visited last night, and I feel I can tell her, Mom, maybe I get it, just a little – why you held fast to Catholicism, how you found a lifetime of material to ponder, to strengthen you in your own Gethsemanes. But enough. There is bread to bake for the family, and trust to declare, despite this inclement weather – Spring will come, the seeds I’ve set will rise, the Great Song roars on.

Image of Gethsemane by Coffee-king on the mighty Pixabay.com