A Poem for Holy Week

April 15, Tuesday of Holy Week.

The children are out of school on holiday around here, and the shiny April spring rings out with their laughter.  It's a delicate tinkling though, mostly, mingling with the sound of the river-stream, and the singing birds, and the distant calling of gulls.  The daffodil season has turned over.  Now is the time of bluebells.

There's a sort of quiet that settles on Holy Week, even when you're not looking for it.  I would say that though unconscious, the knowledge of it lingers there, in the back of your mind, except it doesn't--it's not in the mind at all, but all around, somehow.  More than anything, to me this year's Holy Week suggests rest.

I wrote a poem this evening, and Holy Week kind of runs behind it I think, like marble threaded in stone.  Or maybe not.  I'll let you decide.

A second draft:

I like to walk at evening when
today has cooled, ready to be swallowed
by tomorrow, all blue swells and valleys,
the flavor set in.   I need the clumps in me
to settle as well, like silk-rich silt
into my limbs, by skipping soles
over mud and tendons
of root-wood by the river:
the mineral smell of new grass shoots and
luscious, moist mushrooms from the morning's
breakfast--when the waking daylight hours steeled themselves
like girls gathering their skirts to cross
a terrain of potentialities.  Out of many that brush
their hems, a few will catch like burrs
on sheep's unshorn spring fleece. 

copyright L.C. Ricardo.   all rights reserved