I was never one for miracles.
They seemed like wishful thinking
or the inevitable Coke machine
at the end of the last road out of
the last town at the far tip of 
the continent at the bottom of the world.

Experience, says Hume — that's the
ticket. Experience refutes the ignorance
of barbarous nations who believe in
the miraculous. Miracles break laws.

A thirsty person sees a far-off lake
lying across a desert road. What
are we to make of that? This is
the world, every natural law at work,
busting up our sight, creating out of
scraps lying around things
that cannot be.

Then comes Jesus striding from wave
to wave, throwing demons up against
the wall, pulling loaves and fishes
out of loaves and fishes, and I read
about it and I say bread that is eaten —
chewed and swallowed — lasts longer
than the water of life at the far end
of the desert road, which I could have
and die trying. 

When someone is hurting,
the first thing they must do
is answer the question,
"Are you alright?"

It's call and response,
a ping-pong of language,
a catechism of guilt performed.

The wounded answers
between clenched teeth,
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Really."
Then the business of caring
can take place.

We will ride our invisible horses
into the wind. But we are truer
to the earth of which we are made
to say, "There is a deep abyss here
that I must climb out of — help me."

There is a silence when we reach someone
that is better than words. The silence
of grasses moved by the breeze. The silence
of a hand laid against a cheek. The silence
of a blanket laid over one's feet.

It's true: shock rises like heat
off the pavement. We come
from a far place in the wake 
of an afterthought. How will
our minds grow into our bodies?
But attention surely must be paid.

Forgive us our laggard ways —
how we now live —
we are asked to live
faster than sound,
reaction crucifying
perception. 

Like a guest awaited that arrives resplendent
and inevitably leaves, Easter is and now was.

All during Lent I saw crosses everywhere
in telephone poles, airplanes overhead,
the twisted rebar of burnt-out buildings,
at the throat of the thin girl outside the 7-11.

"He died for your sins," I am told. I don't deny
my sins; they are before me in my path, burning
cinders through which I must find my way. Time
and reason don't avail. This is not the question.

The disciples on the Emmaus road encountered one
whose voice they knew but could not recognize.
He stopped with them, he broke the bread,
he blessed it and then disappeared.

On Monday the machinery clanks up again,
buses wheeze and lumber. What change has come?
After every death a breath that's drawn
feels like a gift received and a grief remembered.

Every breaking body, every breaking heart,
points always in all places to the real,
the weight of stones, the newness that is possible,
the vanishing of the Real, whom I have been
running toward ever since.

You were the perfect circle, hammered upon
the anvils of our peasant selves.
You were the desert night, cool points
of stars to our nets and fish and warm lake waves.

We followed you down all the foot-sore roads
north and south, east and west. Birds circled
darkly against the jagged light of noon.
Where the body is, they will gather.

We here have left everything for you,
what's in it for us? And you said, No one
who has given up all for my sake, but will
receive all and more in the kingdom of my Father.

I said I would follow you down, even to death,
but here I am. They broke you, smashed the circle.
You said you'd rise on the third day. I will believe it
when I see it, my Lord of the circle, my Embodied Star.

The controversial Yeshua, a faith healer from the hill
country, was hanged today near the Empire Steet
turnoff, just off Highway 95. Police were called out to
direct traffic and prevent pileups, as people slowed to
catch a glimpse of the charismatic young teacher and healer.
With more on the story, here is WFCK's Brittany Weeks.
Brittany, what can you tell us?

Well, Tom, as you know, it was just five days ago
that Yeshua — he goes by one name — entered DC
in a triumphal parade. He was driven in an open Jeep
down Georgia Avenue to the cheers of thousands.
He was widely revered for his work among the poor and 
homeless, opioid addicts, immigrant groups, woman
and children. But not everyone appreciated him.
Some I talked to in the crowd told me they had heard
news reports that he was a pedophile and that he
associated with prostitutes, far left activists, and terrorists.
He was arrested late yesterday and brought before the
Evangelical Tribunal for Justice on charges of sedition,
corruption, and tax evasion. The Tribunal reached a
unanimous verdict of guilty on all charges at four a.m.
this morning and by noon he was executed.

Back to you, Tom.

Thanks, Brittany, and now with more on how the
weekend weather is shaping up, here's Ashley!

I cannot forget what he said:
"Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat."
I am Simon, aka Peter. Please don't call me
'The Rock.' That was Jesus — who always loved

a nickname — getting ahead of himself.
He saw in me things that none of my friends
could see. Things that even I couldn't see.
Things that weren't there. But he was sure.

He was always sure, except for once.
"Who do people say that I am?" he asked.
He was groping for an answer.
So, I blurted out what we were all thinking.
"You're the Messiah!" I said. "You're the Son of God."

We were thinking it, but not with any certainty.
It was a line cast out ahead of us in the hope
that we could drag ourselves upstream
against the current.

Now it's over. He is dead. And we are adrift.
We are huddled like castaways in a boat.
Was it all for nothing, his sufferings, our hopes?
I can go back to fishing. I will always be a fisherman.

We ate a simple meal, bread
dipped in oil, wine, some figs.
It was what we could afford.

Jesus blessed the bread. He tore it
into chunks. We watched.
No one spoke.

"Who is it?" I asked, only because
Peter nudged me. "The one I give
the bread to," Jesus replied.

He handed it to Judas. A drop of oil
glistened on the table and sank
into it. Here and gone.

We did not think it was
the Last Supper. We did
not know ourselves.

Judas left,
and it was night.

In the painting by Duccio,
Jesus rides into Jerusalem.
The disciples crowd behind him,
each with his own gold plate
for a halo.

The crowds gesture, astonished,
hands over hearts, pointing to the sky,
arms extended. The elders seethe.
They all have the same face, the face of
the artist's father or his churlish patron
or the master who beat him.

Zaccheus, that wee little man, is up a tree,
jammed between branch and trunk,
looking far ahead for the cops.
The donkey that Jesus rides paces
patiently, her bemused face mirrored
in the foal beside her.

Jesus rides into the city
of ivory towers, turrets, and porticos.
The shouts of the crowd become
the cries of gulls: he is by the shore again,
that night of waves and lightning,
him stepping from peak to trough to peak.
He was strong, then, joyous — lifting and hurling
the storm. "Don't be afraid!" he called out then.

Now, just ahead, there is a bronzed
and tarnished door to a darkness
wide enough to take a man.

He raises a hand: we believe it
to be a blessing.

"Joy knows, and Longing has accepted,— 
only Lament still learns . . ." — Rilke

Friday's Lament goes out to the street,
lies down next to the dead child. Lament
claws open her breast. Darkness drops from the sky,
crouches, croaking, over the child. Lament is dumb
with horror; her mouth is a jagged Why?

Saturday's Longing paces the catacombs,
its damp walls glistening. He is an eye
braced wide in the darkness, gathering
possible light. He leans, listening — breath held —
toward the When.

Sunday's Joy trembles, She looks for her assailants
but does not find them. She puzzles at the How.
She touches the warm earth, she laughs!
She throws her arms wide and bows to the heavens.
"We shall dance! I am alive! We are still here."

Will we ever get away from it,
the words unsaid when loyalty is called for,
the bare loss of breath when doubled over
or the skin ticking past the darkened doorway?
An outthrust arm which grabs the shell in sand,
the stone uncovered that will fill the hand.

The grinding wrongs, capricious, arbitrary.
One favored, one denied by sleight of tongue.
And Abel always with a sideways glance,
smug even in his fear, rocks back upon his heels
from the fist. Brother mine, stand up! Don't spoil
the game we know so well with all your drama.

I could not know you unless we were at odds.
The flash of flint, the friction felt, our small explosions.
Our sandpaper selves will wear each other smooth.
If I had met you in a distant archipelago,
we would have fought at first, no words exchanged,
no quarter given nor expected from a higher code.

Someone asked me once if we were related.
He saw a marked resemblance in the eyes,
the line of jaw, the curl of lip, the coldness
in the smile. "Distantly," I said, but knew
that in the geometric radius of life, you are
the angle without which I'm incomplete.