Written in a church in Rome, 2/08.

She holds the baby,
tender, white, and rosy,
duckling-headed.
He doesn't know yet the slaughtering.
Palm branches that we held last year
in jubiliant hands trying
to praise our Lord
have crumbed into
ashes, remember, oh, man
is rubbed an incriminating
mark with a thumb on our
brow, that thou art dust
and to dust thou shall
return, for thou art
the Cain. We try
to love. And why
that our failed praise, our
betrayal, our lack of substance, should
turn the mark?
That we are in mourning
a people in mourning
Because our love dusted.
The father's eyes
are sad as he looks
at us, but holds
his son. He will
kill the fatted calf.
It hangs before
us.
The palm fell apart
in my hand.
What he says to
us is in his silence -
in the father's arms
in the hang of his
head. We are the
marked ones,
we the Cains, we
the loved ones. The lightning
struck his forehead -
the thumb of the priest presses
ours - "and because of this mark,
no one shall touch you."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
(In church I was looking at a piercing picture of Mary holding a fuzzy-headed Jesus, and an equal touching painting of the father holding the prodigal son wrapped in his arms. The father's gaze is right at the audience. And the crucifix, of course. And it all struck me as irony - unfortunately, I was writing in church as the Italian service went on - that the mark on Cain's forehead was a mark of a sinful but protected man, and the mark of Christians on Ash Wednesday - the cross on the brow - is made from the ashes of the palms we used for praise on Palm Sunday the year before. It's sort of a shameful revelation, the part you play in the crowd that said, "Hosannah in the highest!" and the next day said, "Crucify Him.")