I envy the soldiers' sleep -- ah, the sleep of a soldier. Jesus was laid in the tomb and rocked in. The good luck of the soldier sleeping through what he was never meant to see. The day before, when Jesus "died on the cross," was the day he harrowed heaven. No one was there. It was just a big desert like the Great Basin where the rain that falls finds no river, where the rain has nowhere to go but back. Jesus plowed the sand behind his best donkey, but even in sand the plow would not scour. His harrow raised apparitions of dust: a wedding dress, a suit of Spanish armor, a cassock, a twisted sword, Judas warming his hands by a dusty fire. But really, there was no one. No, no one. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY by ROBERT BURNS PASSER MORTUUS EST by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY PHRYGES: JUSTICE PROTECTS THE KING by AESCHYLUS SORROWS AND CONSOLATIONS by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE SWALLOW by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON WHEN MARY GOES WALKING by PATRICK REGINALD CHALMERS |