The Mile: Good Friday

The Mile: Good Friday

You will come at a turning of the trail

to a wall of flame

                                                Anita Barrows

                                                “Questo Muro”

It started in the garden didn’t it,

(though maybe earlier) when he’s begging

his father for his life only to be

resolved to losing it after all.

And all the blood means nothing. 

It will fall onto the ground

and the olive roots may tingle

a bit and honestly be the only

things that know what’s remarkable

about all that’s going on here:

a kiss is still waiting on the lips

of the man who will rat him out. Honestly,

it’s still being shaped, all that

money hasn’t even changed

hands.  And the rest of them are still

asleep and he means to sleep

with them, like he will tomorrow

but with thieves.  He hasn’t even

considered the real possibility

of it all being some big

mistake, not really, something that can,

just by his asking, simply go

away.  Be taken.  The way

if he shuts his eyes tight enough

he might see his mother like she was

when he was young, when he had

other brothers and sisters

and she was fair and good and so

was Joseph.  All that, in blood

or foster, was undoubtable. 

The dust on their feet at the end

of the week.  The reading, when he

came of age, in the temple.  The

headaches after that, that would 

lay him flat for days and days

and  there would be no saving him

but to go down into the dark

like he’d seen some men do, who reach  

into a ewe who births her spring 

lambs, lambs take to the city to be

bought and burned.  The kick

of it then after being delivered,

the caul pulled from the nose

and mouth and chewed

if the ewe wanted to and needed

the vein and meat of it

exhausting as the labor was, even

with the men.  Today there

was no warm narrow cave

that tightened against him, unless

as he bled his sweat it could be said

the bells and clashing spears

in the distance were a sort of cave

entrance and they meant to take him

into it and away from all this

and pull him up into the sky for everyone

to see and spit at or piss on

or weep and weep over because why?

because he’d told them he’d seen

all of this coming into him

like dreams they didn’t believe

him capable of dreaming? And so 

they slept the party off

now under these same trees

a few of them kicking out but still

asleep, twitching like dogs that follow

another road in their head

away from heat, away from 

the rest of the sheep,

lone, only them and maybe

if the sky was right, a waxing

or, you choose, waning, moon.