Easter

Amen
The crowd applauds
Goes home
The Passion over

The image is fixed:
Metal fuses through skin to wood
A chemical trinity:
An alloy of the dead, the living, the once-alive

Remember the melting snow lactation?

Arms strewn
Flung along the cross-spar
Baubles on a Christmas tree

Remember the shrunk-up leaves
Pointing into softened skin?

Legs drain
Feel the warming of the earth
Up through the dead crossed roots

Remember the suckling?
Remember the strategies?
Remember the pregnant future?

Body leaks
Fluid tars the extremities
Body smears its passion
Its simple degradation
Down that sapless joint of wood

They wait at the bottom:
A chemical trilogy
A Magdalene, a Virgin, a future Queen
They turn as three and think of fate
As the scouring reek of vinegar
Whinges past their nostrils

And the spears clash behind them
And the sandals tamp the dust up

And a Mary turns to a Mary
Shawls her head and whispers
“Best pray for resurrection
Otherwise we’re fucked.”