Codas
Written by Stuart Harris
Posted in Poetry
Art by GJ Gillespie
Mary and Mary and Salome
encountered a young man
who told them he was alive
but they were scared
and didn't tell anyone.
Or they came and told
Peter and the rest of us.
Or maybe he appeared
only to Mary Magdalene,
still smelling of sweet perfume
and she came and told all of us
as we were mourning,
trying to make sense
of a huge new absence
at the center of our lives.
Accounts vary.
If she came, we didn't believe her.
We had seen him die.
We know what death is.
Of course, if the three women
just ran away, scared,
then how do I know all of this?
Where do I even find the voice
to tell you this story?
My syllables are just a scribbler's
cynical trick, a metafiction.
So he must have come to us
when we were eating, scolding us
because we know what death is.
He said some hard words.
Those who keep believing
in death will be condemned.
Those who don't can drink
poison and play with snakes.
He said we would speak
in strange tongues.
Luke remembers it differently.
He showed us his hands and feet.
He ate fish with us.
Luke recalls soft talk of forgiveness,
raised hands, blessings.
But I remember something harder
and stranger-judgment
and an otherworldliness in his eyes.
I don't even remember the trip to Bethany
though Luke swears we walked.
I just remember that he was gone again.
But somehow this second loss,
this absence after impossible presence,
was different, compelling us to go,
to tell people, to shape words
that helped others stop,
stand up straight,
and lay their sicknesses aside.