Silent Wednesday

Somehow in the strident ring of markets and limestone and the effervescent pulse of mid-morning, the slosh of rejoinders and missed sales, and the continuous niggling of those who hunched over the law like it was their final meal,

you avoided the press of those trying to translate miracles into Beelzebub and madness, of those feigning melancholy and rectitude among the masses

under the Mount Moriah sun. You authored the final act of scribal silence, your own scroll untainted, purer than gypsum, waiting for the heft and diatribes, taunts and spittle, hanging on for the slow march of prophecy, the work of flesh and earth alone in the will of the Father, hidden away in Bethany, girding yourself for the coronation to come.