Sally Read
Writer and Poet
Magdalene: Washing the Christ’s Feet
I take his feet, flesh closest to earth,
with their sigh of heat, blisters,
the cuts and aches. I wash, kiss him,
lift a piece of his pain and am gifted
with new doors flung open—
eye-bruising light in the soul’s barn-dark.
There’s noiseoverhead—
chewing of meat, words like birds charging,
clanking of cups—but here I am,
the peg pulling divinity down.
Only I know the quiet roar of touch,
the march of his being into myself.
As though I were a lily, and he
the water filling all of my veins.
Gethsemane
I watch the push of soft red petal from the cactus’ tip,
the sticky cobweb strung from spike to spike.
These days, when prayer’s too hoarse, too ripped
for words—I cannot say a word—does that still count?
Answer: we know how his tight mesh of skin that night
leaked drops of blood. And how the angel came,
pushed through the dark like hand through sleeve,
like notes of ordered song from vicious wind. All comes
from inside out. Dread thoughts escape, un-skinned,
and wild—like moths or silver flash of olive leaves—
but, too, the angel comes from where he hid, and sings.
The curtain tears and so does skin and so does prayer;
it is a kind of wordless tearing—our brokenness used
as entry for him; our brokenness filled by his.
From "Dawn of this Hunger", 2019