Denial

Today is the beginning of Holy Week—the seven days leading up to Easter. Holy Week is a roller coaster that starts with Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), plunges into grief at the Last Supper (Maundy Thursday), bottoms out with Christ’s crucifixion and burial (Good Friday), then launches to the greater heights of Christ’s resurrection (Easter Sunday).

This week and next, I’ll poetically participate in Holy Week through two different posts. Today’s is a poem from my fourth book, The Anonymity of Waiting, entitled, “Denial.” This poem uses imagery to evoke a significant moment before Jesus was crucified.

Denial

The rooster’s serrated scream
guts the clouds,
which hemorrhage sunrise
on a world wrapped in shadow

lying
there, as if it never knew the sun,
revolved around it,
or danced across the abyss
in the embrace of its rays.

The sun is an eye
no one can look into.

Rolling away,
the clouds shrink and shed bitter
rain beneath hunched, 
gray billows.