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Mary Magdalene Mistakes the Gardener

Genesis 3John 20

Listen, I’m no mad woman. I’ve been among you,
Reclined at your tables, you’ve broken my bread
you dolts. It’s true:
I entered the garden’s east gate and
ducked the bedolach boughs twisting in sinuous bark-lynch;
those timbers ice-broken over winter.
The footpath tangled in briars,
and there I caught my foot and
fell and tore my palms in the thorns that
received me.
I labored to lift me from the weeds
impish and clawing, gnawing
like teeth when the
gardener lifted me to these broken trees.
Then I regained my feet and clutched my bleeding hands
in the open limb wounds, blackening
with sap
invigorated by Spring.
The scent and tack
of bdellium gum flexing,
sealing my abrasions
sediment settling in finger-crease.
All I touched bears my dirtprint still.
See, there’s handprints on my knees
when I leaned to rest. There must
be handprints on his robes when
I groped at him to stay.
See, even now by the lamps of our dinner,
here in the coated creases of my hands
is the earth from which we draw this bread.
Here are the thorns and thistles.
Red and infected are the prints that bear them.
In the sweat of my face you can see
how I hid the tears of my weeping
and the streak where he wiped them away. 

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