Mary Magdalene Mistakes the Gardener

by Seth Wieck | March 31, 2013

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.