Easter
Windy, same as usual. Shivering daffodils, huddled crocuses.Sunbursts that are essentially a dark joke. Spattering of moistProto-hail, says our sister, who will eventually become a nun.Funny that we remember single words spoken forty years ago.The huddle of shoulders in pews, the hands held out for Hosts.The rich russet scent of raincoats and overcoats and umbrellas.The slight polite hesitation as someone looks to lift the kneeler.The way everyone kneels except the very old and the surgicals.The clasps pinning down mantillas and veils and white scarves.The burly theater of it all, the ancient tidal rise and fall and ebbAnd startling resurrection against all sense and patent evidence.The awful genius of the faith is that it is so much more and lessThan religion; we have no choice but to insist on a resurrection,And choose one among us to drag a cross, and then leap from itAnd emigrate, but not before collecting documentary witnesses;Otherwise we are all merely walking compost, and where is theFun in that, not to mention why not commit crimes twice daily?And at the other end of the spectrum, not one soul on that rainyEaster morning long ago cared a whit about theological matters.They did not even care if the thin man once died and rose again.They were there, in clans and tribes and couples, for each other,Out of respect and affection, and habit and custom, and becauseThey wanted to give their children a thing they couldn't explainVery easily, something to run away from and later back towards,Something insistent that didn't make sense then and still doesn't.Something you can easily disprove and can never actually prove,Which is basically the point. We cover it with smoke and money,With vestments and learned commentary, with visions and edicts,But under the cloth there is only wild hope, to which we give HisFace, sitting there by the lake quietly eating baked fish and bread.At the end of the meal we walked out into the rain, singing badly.
Tommy's twin brother
Because there were not only the four regular gospels, you know,There were lots of others, all jostling and elbowing for the Book.There was the Gospel of Thomas, which begins Here are hiddenWords that Jesus spoke as written down by his twin brother Tom,Also called Didymos. Also there was Mary Magdalene's Gospel,Which is missing its first six pages but then asks a good question,Will matter be destroyed or not? and Tommy's twin brother says,All nature, all creatures exist in