Pages

Saturday 11 April 2020

Holy Saturday




At home
Anxious
Worrying
Frightened
On a sunny day - 
Holy Saturday,
When I wouldn’t normally go anywhere
But today can’t anyway -
My thoughts travel back
To that first Holy Saturday
Sabbath day
Limbo day
‘Twixt death and resurrection. 
Women
Broken hearted
Grieving
Lost and afraid
Longing to leave their homes,
Sunny or not,
When they wouldn’t normally go anywhere.
Sabbath rest enforced.
Longing to put their friend to rest
Eternal rest
Accompanied by perfumes
Scents
Spices to disguise the smell of death
And hark back to his birth
And hint at his royalty. 
I see their grief 
And know
That with the morning will come joy. 
Mourning turned to dancing
In the light of love brought back
To life. 
But how dark their future seemed. 
How empty. 
How lonely. 
I sit at home
Busy at home
Safe at home. 
They hid. 
Rested with their grief
Followed the rules 
And planned their dawn visit. 

I long for a seemingly distant tomorrow 
When we can return to the ordinary
Step, blinking, into the streets
And laugh 
And hug
And dance
Together again. 
They longed for a vanished yesterday
When they basked in his extraordinary 
Walked beside the man
Who laughed
Embraced
Rejoiced
And wept with them. 
This isolation will end
As theirs would. 
We hope in reasonable confidence 
That this cannot 
Go 
On 
Forever
And so we cope and carry on. 
But they somehow found strength
Carried on
When all hope had been destroyed. 
And I am in awe of them for that. 
©️Laura Moore, April 2020