Friday, April 6, 2012

five-sense (good) Friday -- mostly taste, but more

Thinking about Last Night's Seder after Reading Acts, Hebrews, James, and 1-2 Peter

Horseradish burn
awakens my tongue to
other pains--
a dear friend's brother, broken like an eggshell
five days too early for Easter,
the blood of a boy on a sidewalk
just beyond the church doors.

I do not welcome these bitter 
herbs into my body.
I do not welcome this saltwater parsley,
telling my mouth millennia of tears.
The juice in my near-empty cup
turns my stomach, because who
are these young ones to fill up what is lacking?
The cinnamon-walnut apples,
bricks and mortar,
are sick-sweet cement in my mouth,
because who could forget that they labored
under oppression,
as so many do today, 
even to pick those apples,
those walnuts?

And yet we do forget.

Wash my hands, wash my feet,
as I wash the soft feet of a giggling child.
Sever the flesh at the tip of my heart,
cut away the callous at the end of my love,
and forgive my heaped-up judgments.
I believe--
help my unbelief.

Let me taste and see--
down to the raisins,
the toasted heels,
the crumbs--
the bitter and the sweet.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you Cindy. I was with my mom during Holy Week as she, and we, received a somber health prognosis. You have put into words and images some of what has been in my heart as well.

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