Easter Sunday morning. (Mary’s journey)

Sunday morning. (Mary’s journey)

First thing Sunday morning,
the birds have ceased their reveille
and the sun is yet to ward off
the remaining fingers of cold.
Two nights with little sleep
toll heavy with a cold of their own.
 
Friday night was full of anger and hurt,
the six-hour sight of suffering
a lingering bad breath in the mind
fighting off the need for sleep.
 
Saturday night was full of fear and loss,
fitful remembrances and frightening imaginations,
and the terrible sense of a thing unfinished.
 
So, less than fresh,
she met the awakening day.
How she came to be here,
already outside the city -
a mystery of preoccupation,
familiar streets merely ghosts in passing.
Now, the aroma of the spices in her hand
slowly bring the day into perspective,
as the road brightens beneath heavy feet.
How she would bribe the guards
to move the stone, still unformed,
a strategy of beguiling, formed from poverty,
may need to suffice.
 
Why she was going, to perform the ritual,
a disparity of honouring the dead
and a last chance to touch Him.
Entering the garden, an acrid incense
of stale spice and stale bodies
overcomes the well intentioned scent
of the gardeners craft.
Death has its own bouquet.
 
The path leads quickly to the tomb,
though each footfall is an age of distress,
each turn - a curtain of protection removed,
before the inevitable encounter with reality.
At the tomb, the mouth of an abyss
its jaws open in emptiness,
the world falls apart
and unshed tears
fall unfettered
from a broken heart.

He is not here.