Joanna

We do not know
 This Joanna,
 The one with the two Marys
 Whose wild grief
 Must have kept them up all night,
 Drove them to a sealed tomb
 On a strange Spring morning
 Because there was nothing else
 For them to do.
 Maybe Joanna, too,
 Knew such extravagant love,
 Hid it beneath her respectable cloak
 Until those bright-gowned men
 Reminded her that life
 Could not be found
 As long as death devours us.
 Maybe they saw what she had hidden.
 Maybe they saw
The love in her shielded eyes,
 Heard the remnant of a song
 In her broken heart,
 Knew that none of those men--
 Not Peter, not John, not Thomas--
 Was so ready for a
 Resurrection.

--Timothy Haut, Easter, 2013

Holy Saturday

There is change in the air,
a hopeful, warm sun
on this holy afternoon.
I am drawn outside,
... to smell the waiting earth,
to listen to the redwings
proclaim a message
which I cannot understand.
And then I know it is time
to do one of the things
which I must do
on my knees.
I scratch a cross
in the welcoming soil,
fling in a handful of shriveled peas,
and cover them with earth.
Like prayer,
resurrection can not be rushed.
It is a thing
that leaves us with dirty hands
and bent knees
on a sweet March afternoon,
makes us get up, go home,
and wait.
 
--Timothy Haut, Deep River, CT

It Is Finished

This haunts the world:
 Love crossed out,
 Hammered, thorned,
 As if beauty, or truth,
  Or holiness,
 Could ever be broken,
 Smudged out forever.
 What is finished
 Is evil’s dream
To nail hope down.
 There are plenty of crosses
 Still--
 Tears, pain, sorrow, fear,
 Hearts speared, aching.
 And this, too,
 Wonder of wonders,
 Love.
 The thing that
Never
Dies.

 --Timothy Haut, Deep River, CT

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

Peepers

Last night they sang,

A surprise in the dark,
Love’s voice
At winter’s end.
Out of the cold water,
Creeping up bare branches
To serenade the stars,
To cry out to the fullest moon,
They call us to listen.
These tiny peepers
Carry a cross on their back,
Like one long ago
Who sang in the night
When Spring seemed far away,
Who gave us love
Like a full moon,
Something to mark
Our winter’s end,
Something to make us stop
Hold our breath
Listen with the heart
Give thanks
For such an unexpected joy.

--March 27, 2013

The Stones Cry Out

The stones are piled willy-nilly
on the hill behind my house,
gathering moss and lichens
in their brooding silence.
They lift up into a wall here and there,
peer out from the leafy debris
which has taken eons to build.
Far up the slope the landscape changes
into ledges, the skeletons left behind
by ancient glaciers,
barren cliffs where once my children hid,
where often I go to find the quietness,
a place where a still, small voice might yet be heard.
Sometimes, there are whispers of wind
in tall trees, the cries of red-tailed hawks,
the trickle of water singing its way
to a far-away river.
And once I heard the stones themselves
cry out,
as if to make me see them,
to see their long patience, enduring
winter after winter, the falling of stars,
asking me always to pay attention
to where the noise is not,
to the silent ones
who have seen God shaping a world.

--Timothy Haut, Deep River, CT

Habemus Papam

Black smoke billows
From the chimney,
High above Michelangelo’s vision,
Two hands reaching across the heavens
The holy finger seeking just one
To father his world.
The old men below bow and wonder,
Wait for a sign,
Perhaps each of them pondering
How his own feet
Might look in those red shoes.
Soon enough the smoke will blow white,
And words will ring out
Over Old St. Peter’s Square,
“Habemus papam!”
We will have a Pope, indeed,
Though this mere mortal too will age and die,
And his robed shoulders will not be enough
To hold the world.
Nuns and housewives will pray for him;
Jaded unbelievers will hope for a miracle,
Or at least a small blessing.
One may come.
But the great Hand overhead will still reach
Toward other hands below,
And maybe somewhere,
One will reach back,
Some Adam or Eve, a child of earth,
Chosen
To knit a little piece of the universe together,
To burn with love’s fire,
To be a star in a terrible darkness,
To sing a holy song.
And God will smile.

Prodigal

A blackbird keeps watch
 From the top of a tall cedar,
 His feathers glossy
 In the early spring sun.
 A dusty road spills from around a bluff,
 Which casts a long shadow
 Across the greening fields.
 There he comes,
 This lean, broken boy
 Who has spit in the eye of the world,
 Who has swaggered as far
 From the farm in the boondocks
 As his old man’s money could take him,
 Who has danced with the devil
 Till he was nearly dead.
 He is defeated, bent, hungry, lost,
 And there is only one road left to try:
 Home.
 He is afraid
 That he has burned all his bridges.
 He has nothing good
 To show for these months away.
 He is prepared for a locked door,
 A dead end.
 And then he stops in his tracks
 At a ruckus up ahead,
 Stops to grasp this miracle of a thing.
 It's the old man himself,
 Racing through the dusty sunlight,
 Arms wide, crazy with love.
 Tears stream down his wrinkled face
 In pure, plain joy.
 "My son," he blubbers
 Into the boys tangled hair.
 Even the blackbird knows
 That this is heaven,
 Or as close as it gets around here.
 He fluffs his warm feathers.
 Sings, sings.

--Timothy Haut, Deep River, CT

Planter of Trees

Trees grow in New England soil
unsought, untended, wild,
springing up even in unlikely places,
on the edge of a windblown beach,
or high in the merest crack
of a bouldered cliff.
But out on the prairie,
where sky is everywhere
and long grass waves in the wind,
a tree rises, holds on
to the earth for dear life.
To be a planter of trees there
is a holy calling,
a work that takes a life.
My uncle loved the hardy oaks,
the cottonwoods by the river,
cried when the elms died one by one.
He prayed on his knees,
pressing large-knuckled hands
into Iowa soil,
stroking a slip of wood
which would be a peach tree
if he gave it enough water,
a pruning here and there
after winter was finished with it,
and, of course,
love.

--Timothy Haut, March 3, 2012