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Tintoretto – The Supper at Emmaus, 1543
A BREATH OF WIND
Friday. Saturday. Sunday.
Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday.
Thursday. Friday. Saturday.
He’d slipped away from us
on a Thursday, and we knew
it wasn’t like the other times –
he wasn’t coming back.
Course, Luke said he’d heard
a voice: stereo, pillars of light:
“He’ll come in the same way.”
Maybe he was right. The Sunday after next
was different. It wasn’t like all the times we’d spent
reminiscing. Cleopas broke some bread;
Miriam’s face was radiant; we shared it,
not just with each other, but with strangers
who’d never met him, and were hungry to hear
about the empty cave.
Trying to explain it in Aramaic
was hard enough; putting it into Greek…
“Empty.” “He was here.” “It was him,
by the side of the lake, teasing us.”
Teasing? Like Galilee again,
the first few weeks – tired, confused,
mocked by those we’d belonged among
for giving up the business, but
deeply, deeply happy, even when we weren’t
guffawing at his jokes,
or laughing with the sudden laughter
of a baby’s who’s dropped and caught.
And then the next day:
the first one who could walk again
when we told the tale.
© Chris Fewings 2010
