Malchus

For Holy Thursday

In the dusk cloaking the terrified faces
still muddled with unbidden sleep,
you could not tell the characters apart.
There they all were,
flailing themselves like moths at a flame,
and he, the flame, holding the center.
The silver pieces in one hidden pocket
burned against a thigh,
and voices cried out, willing some to run,
and another to swing an unsheathed sword,
so blood bloomed like a spring flower
from a stunned servant's ear.
He was not ready for this,
dropping to the tender Spring earth,
his hand red, wet, warm with fear.
And then, for just a moment,
before the tide of time swept them all up again,
the flame flared up, a face lit in torchlight,
and a hand touched the burning ear.
As in the void of creation's dawn
a breath moved across the chaos
to pull back the ancient darkness,
calling forth light to be light,
so in that unholy Thursday chaos,
and in every fearful nightfall since,
when for us all things seem doomed to fall apart,
that hand is there, again,
if but for a moment,
to mend some broken piece
of humble flesh and breaking heart.

--Timothy Haut, Deep River, CT