Saturday Comes Before Sunday

Maybe its calm where you are, but not here.  Maybe the only tweets so far this morning are the literal birdsong, coaxing the day into being, but not here.  Maybe you slept the night sound, the sleep of the dead. But not here.

No, here the wind, that invisible force of nature so often akin to the spirit, here it huffed and puffed all night long.  No, you know what, huff and puff are words for children and safety approved playground equipment.  No, here the wind raged through the night, not merely announcing itself for all to hear, but, but, but angry, furious, howling down the foothills scattering trashcans and Saturday morning news and shoes that we told them to pick up but they left outside.  And then stillness, you'd think it was over, that the wind had run out of gas, tank empty, rage over, but no, no, no it would whip again and again shaking all in its path like a tearstruck mother would shake an evening's prodigal child I was worried sick/where were you?/don't you ever leave like that again you hear me!


Yes, yes, that's it, the wind blowing down fences and upending grills, sweeping the house clean looking for some lost coin, something of value, worth, weight, something that mattered but now is gone, something taken even, stolen, thieved.

Maybe where you are Easter's mood is being set by smooth pastels and lilies arranged just so on the table, but not here, not yet.  No, here the mother has cried throughout the night watch, shrieked in anger and fear and rage and terror and abandonment as the sword pierces her heart not once, but over and over and over, again and again.  She cleaves at breasts where he nursed, grabs knees he bounced upon, shakes her head in a violent attempt to erase the day for surely it was dream, surely it can't end like this, surely he's not dead.  If he were before her she'd take him by his thirty-something shoulders and shake him I've been worried sick/don't you ever leave like that again you hear me!  She'd shake the shoulders of God himself because she's his mother and...but he's not before her.  No, he's hanging on the outskirts of town between two faces that only a mother could love.  And so all she can do is blow, breathe, exhale, inhale, strive against heaven and earth for a mother shouldn't bury her son, that's just not how its supposed to be, not then, not now, not ever.

Yes, I believe we can feel the gravity of the Friday we now call good, but then I'm afraid we jump to Sunday in our minds and hearts and souls and strength.  We perform some bunny-hop, leaping over Saturday's absolute desolation, its utter forsakenness.  Nobody back then, including his mother, thought he'd rise again.  No, he was dead, out of gas, dream over.

Maybe its calm where you are.  But not here, not right now.  No, in these moments a mother's death-cry courses through the mountains, riding the wind looking, searching, aching for her life's love for they have taken him...and I don't know...I don't know if I can go on...