The sky gray as rock,
the cool of day’s end,
a time to clean up the wake
of last month’s wind—
sticks, leaves, and other wrack
strewn across the lawn.
The light rustle of the rake,
snap of sticks in the trash bin,

and bells, ringing faintly
beyond backyards and houses—
far enough away they take me
a while to even notice:
the Holy Saturday service,
wrung out of darkness.

————-—*

Walking to the tomb
with ointment and sweet spices,
Mary Magdalene had no thought
of resurrection, even if Jesus

had foretold it. She had come
to attend to what
the Pharisees wanted most:
the body of Christ

still dead. Their wager:
all in on mortality.
That’s why the soldiers
had been posted, to guarantee

a corpse. The same that Magdalene
is walking toward, to clean.

————-—*

All day a sword in my heart
for my darling, who all day
has hid, exhausted from the hard
all-night prowling on her way

to adulthood. I grieve
outside her room, where she sleeps,
untouchable. I have to believe
in Magdalene, on her way to keep

faith with what humans do
when there is nothing else
to do. Her walk, forlorn, forgot:

before the prophecy came true.
Gray dusk, and the peal of bells.
I rake my wind-scourged lot.

 

 

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William Wenthe’s fifth book of poems is The Gentle Art (LSU). Originally from New Jersey, he is Paul W. Horn Distinguished Professor of Poetry at Texas Tech University.

 

 

 

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