On Sunday

It was on the Sunday

that he pulled the wheat.

They arrived with flowers,

shuffling through the dawn

as the dawn snuffed out

the last candles of night.

Their faces betrayed their belief

that yesterday would always be better

than tomorrow,

despite what he said.

He would not say it again,

so why bother to believe him on that score?

And the flowers,

they too were silent witnesses to disbelief.

Like the grass,

they were cut off from the root,

the bulb, the source of life.

He was the flower they cherished,

the flower now perished

whose fate the lilies of the field,

now tight in hand,

would re-enact.

So when they passed the crouched figure

at the edge of the road,

they thought little of him,

scarcely seeing his form through their tears.

Had they looked even a little,

they would have seen a man

letting grain fall through his fingers,

dropping to the earth

to die and yet to rise again.

It was on the Sunday

that he pulled the wheat.

From: Stages on the Way, Iona Community Wild Goose Resource Group