The Word was told to hush the rowdy crowd,
their off-key songs of praise that followed him
and mingled with the rock dust raised by tramping
feet, percussive sandals slapping dirt
so that to breathe was to inhale hosanna.
With a distant look he said, “Into
the silence (should they cease), the rocks themselves
would rouse, would raise the cry.” Hyperbole,
as he was known to use, the rabbi never
one to pass a teaching moment by,
but—more than merely figurative speech—
did Jesus, saying so, evoke the rocks
that spoke along the path of Israel?
Did he remember then a pillow turned
to pillar where the angels had passed by,
the tablets etched by God’s own hand that cried
the law to rocky-hearted folks, the Jordan’s
boulders pried from under priests then piled
twelve high, the slate slab Samuel declared
a monument to Yahweh’s aid in war?
When human voices faded, still the raised-up
boulders stood as words without a word.
They spoke, they testified, and, yes, they sang
about the deeds of God—a river-splitting,
heaven-dwelling, law-imparting God.
Perhaps, as well, the Word remembered then
the bloodied uncut stones of altars raised
for sacrifice, which told the story of
sin’s cost in every bright-red drip that dropped
into the cracks and pooled in crevices,
persistent lullaby of life through death.
If that grand choir of stones sang out to him
amid procession’s brief cacophony,
did Jesus hear as well the soloist’s deep breath
and smile to know there was a stone about
to offer rumbled, rolling gloria?
About to start the final movement of
the opera by crying out to all
the grief-choked world in endless echo: Love’s
redeeming work, “He is no longer here!”