Rolled Away

by Jeffrey Essmann | April 12, 2023 1:00 am

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This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Mark D. Bennion.

Rolled Away

So much remains unknown of the exact moment
on the morning of the new week when your spirit
body entered the glove of flesh, the comet

of the raised figure fusing sinew and bone,
how the angels shooed away the Roman
soldiers, scarring them with earth’s convulsion

and then what happened between your arrival
and ascension—ministrations, apocryphal
and true rumors forging into your clinical

disguise when revealing yourself to Mary,
Cleopas, others unknown. Such mercy
not to destroy Jerusalem and its hypocrisy,

how bloodletting could have been your throne.
But you seemingly left Pilate and Caiaphas alone,
and as for Barabbas? You must have known

what would happen as he gained his freedom,
what cords he entwined afterward, the sum
of who and how and what he did become

then and in the interim. A waterfall of questions
gives way to signs in your feet and hands, the tokens
unmoved in your advent, so much more than slogan,

tagline, or evidence of suffering,
but fair symbol to awaken those slumbering,
those who’ve forgotten the means of recovering

any adrift sheep, crops, or prodigals.
You’ve become the stone rolled away, glass annealed,
the bedrock possible, the human and perfectible

prior to my descent into the grave.
Yearning for respite from all that I crave,
I feel deep in the body what it means to be saved.

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Since 2000, Mark D. Bennion has taught writing and literature courses at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He enjoys trying to help his students become better disciples of Christ and diligent scholars. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Mark has had his work appear in The Cresset, Dappled Things, The Lyric, Spiritus, and Windhover. Last year, Resource Publications published his book Beneath the Falls: poems. Mark and his wife, Kristine, are the parents of four daughters and one son.

Source URL: https://integratedcatholiclife.org/2023/04/rolled-away/

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