Gethsemane
Psalm
After they ate the Seder meal,
whose order is very long,
they sang the
closing psalm, and walked together
until they came
to the grove.
Jesus prayed for them and still
wanted to talk
to his students,
his friends.
The rhododendrons closed their
petals;
the blood red
poppies in the fields beyond
had faded at
twilight.
Jasmine, thyme, cedar, and
chamomile scented
the dark air of
Gethsemane.
The adolescent boys, who’d eaten
and drunk a lot,
were exhausted
with the hours, bearing
the history of
the Jewish people,
and they slept
beneath the canopy of olives.
The cyclamen stood sentry beside
their black curls,
like
birds bowing their heads, balancing
on
one leg. “Stay awake with me
and
pray,” their Rabbi said.
Even loyal Peter, who blurted out
his every thought,
was drooling on
his pine needle pillow.
In sorrow until death, Jesus was
human and afraid,
wanted
comfort and company to endure
the
torture Pilate ordered for the tens of thousands
who
dared rebel and love the poor.
“I am the way and the truth and
the life,” he said,
yet he anguished:
no praise for my deeds.
I’ll go to the trash heap of skulls,
like the other insurgents and thieves.
“Stay awake,” he whispered to
their slumbering forms
sleeping
off their feast of flesh and blood,
though
he knew—as He knows all—that to wake
and see him fully
human and fully God was more
than could be
borne by these beloved children.
