Easter Morning, from the Gardener's Eyes

I often find Holy Saturday an odd resting point.  Yesterday was no exception.

You may wonder why I find it odd.  I often go from the rush of the work week to the rush of the end of Holy Week (Maundy Thursday evening to Good Friday) and then there's the pause of Holy Saturday.  It's not always a pause, as we're often at church getting ready for Easter.  Some years, we're spending the afternoon decorating Easter eggs and making bunny cakes.  Some years we've hosted an extravagent-for-us Easter meal, but it's hard to believe we'll ever do that again.  I'm often so exhausted by the time Easter afternoon comes along, that it's hard to imagine being charming Easter party hosts.

Yesterday's Holy Saturday was unusual in that we went to a wedding:  a beautiful ceremony followed by a fabulous meal and wine for every course.  And then we came home and watched the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, which I had yet to see.  I didn't find it offensive.  Tough to watch, in terms of the torture--and yet, the Romans were brutal in that way.

So, here we are at Easter morning.  Here's a poem for Easter.  It tells the story of the first Easter morning from the view of a gardener.  It was inspired by the piece of the Easter story where Mary thinks that Jesus is the gardener, which made me think about the fact that there must have been a real gardener and made me wonder what he thought of all the commotion.

It first appeared in issue 3 of Eye to the Telescope.  The whole volume is devoted to persona poems and edited by Jeannine Hall Gailey.

The Gardener’s Tale


I liked to get to the garden
early, before the harsh
light of day revealed
all my mistakes, all the growth
I couldn’t contain.

I liked the pre-dawn
hours, when I knew
the flowers by their smells
as I rustled
their stems.

That morning I saw
him first. He asked
for bread, and I had a bit
to share. I offered
him olives and some cheese
from my son Simon’s goat.

We talked of ways to attract
butterflies to the garden:
the need for nectar
and leaves for the babies.
I showed him a tree
that had been ailing,
and he suggested a different nourishment.

I thanked him for his wisdom
and moved to the border
of the garden. I didn’t make
the connections until I heard
the shrieks of the women
and Peter nearly knocked me down.