Covered with Bricks

Covered with Bricks

(“Jesus replied, ‘This very night before a rooster crows twice, you will say three times that you don't know me.’” Mark 14:30)

Fixed in time, the prophecy announces the dawn nearer
midnight than most. I did not recognize him in the
firelight
once the opposition seemed to have the upper hand.

Storm

The

Temple,

I wanted to say. I could not comprehend the ways of
bloody stripes and shame. I knew his name
but I had not seen these shadows before, nor
had expected them.

Deliver

Us

Now,

I wanted to cry. Instead I stood by, my mind dull, my
body paralyzed, and my tongue thick in my mouth. I don’t
know.

I

Don’t

Know

Is all I said. How had the tables turned? Had we not earned
a seat at the table, a place in the kingdom, a world where we
finally won?

We do not know him because we only see him
in thunderclouds and brimstone, in conflagrations and
bloodstones filling the valleys up to the bridles of the horses.

We

Don’t

Know

A thing. We only deny him because we never see him
in the eyes of the lynched. We are unhinged, doorways to
the peaceable kingdom covered with bricks.

And the roosters crow again and again
until we are ready to see the dove descend upon
the Son of Man and the eagle bow before the
shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.