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| St Martha's on the Hill |
I wake to a glorious absurdity.
'Risen from the dead' – what divine nonsense!
Death is death, and that's it;
there is no undiscovered country,
no other shore across a final sea.
Yet twenty centuries on, twenty disciples
and one dog,
climb the hill in the morning gloaming,
as drizzle falls,
and tell the nonsense story once again,
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| and one dog |
that our sense isn't God's sense.
And the world over
on hills, in houses and holy places
believers throng
to greet the one who wouldn't let
death be.
The downs have disappeared into the mist.
St Martha's is a stubborn island
where shadowy trees stand sentinel,
as twenty defiant disciples and one dog
sing praise, sing praise to God amidst the gloom.
St Martha's Photo: GNU free documentation license
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Great poem..."and one dog" - the authentic JW touch, and I like being described as a defiant disciple :-)
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A poem a day has become a couple of poems a holiday, but they're always worth the wait, and are always evocative, teasing, humorous and puzzling.
ReplyDeleteThe quartet of poems you have written from Maundy Thursday to Easter work very well as set, with Saturday, that 'non-day' in the calendar being given more meaning by your great little haiku.
Thanks, Jay,
Tim.
Ah how I miss those Easter Dawn Services at St Martha's -- so faith restoring! Services by a cold expanse of estuarial mud just don't seem to hold the same mystery. Thanks, Neil
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