Before God’s last laugh of resurrection, in order to lean more deeply into the narrative of these three days (tri-duum) of promises, communion, mandates of love, betrayal, miscarriage of justice, ignoble death, hollow silence, and dashed hopes, I’ll be posting poetry for each day: Maundy Thursday, “Good” Friday, and Holy Saturday.

Today is, of course, Maundy (or “mandate”) Thursday and we find ourselves hidden among the twelve with Jesus at table with freshly-washed feet, the command of love still thick in the air, and imminent threat of betrayal.

Hints in a meal of trouble come

Hints in a meal of trouble come,

while bread, still warm, newly broken

abides, hidden securely between teeth

in mouths hungry for more.

Hunger assuaged, 24 clean feet and a single, haunted table.

–

Only crumbs remain,

mixed up and jumbled in pools of spilled wine.

A rumpled table top, tussled

with detritus of a meal, but laughing, flaunting its revelry

through unknowing smiles and the heavy eyelids of sleepy friends.

–

They restfully recline, sashes loosened,

bits of meat trapped in beards,

but not without gnawing whispers of

“what now?” “What next?” “When?” And in their shared memory

of goodness sense not the coming bad; the storm clouds of betrayal.

–

An ominous, stealthy breeze sneaks through the room,

slithering past befuddled hearts

and blows its dark breath from one

whose riskless love cannot match he whose riskily painted love,

soon full-flayed and dying, cannot be matched.