It was on the Sunday
that he pulled the corn.

They arrived with flowers,
shuffling through the dawn
as the dawn snuffed out
the last candles of night.
Their faces betrayed their belief
that yesterday would always be better
than tomorrow,
despite what he said.
He would not say it again,
so why bother to believe him on that score?

And the flowers,
they, too, were silent witnesses to disbelief.
Like the grass,
they were cut to be dried to death,
cut off from the root,
the bulb, the source of life.
He was the flower they cherished,
the flower now perished,
whose fate the lilies of the field,
now tight in hand,
would re-enact.

So when they passed the crouched figure
at the edge of the road,
they thought little of him,
scarcely seeing his form through their tears.
Had they looked even a little,
they would have seen a man
letting grain fall through his fingers,
dropping to the earth
to die and yet to rise again.

It was on the Sunday
that he pulled the corn.

For Holy Week, I’m sharing a series of poems that come from Stages on the Way, a book of worship resources for the Easter season prepared by the Iona Community, a Christian ecumenical community headquartered in Scotland and devoted to peace and social justice.