Holy Saturday Comes Early: Pandemic Year

Here we are, Palm Sunday just past,
inside this metaphor of death and life,
of powerful illusions and real power.
The calendar says we approach Good
Friday, when what is most important
dies.

Or has the sun already set on that day?
As we count deaths daily, are we not now
more in the dark first moments
of that new sacred sabbath when
no work can be done, already poised
to rest with those we love, to consume only
what was already prepared? That holy day
when even washing the dead for burial
must wait?

This is no Easter Vigil, the faithful sitting in darkness
but with the hope of sunrise soon. Instead
the pink full moon appears and we confess to hiding
from smile and touch, find ourselves in the space
between life and death, learning to live
apart.

Photo by Camron Flanders. 

Haylee Schwenk

Haylee Schwenk is an editor, poet, wife, and mom who has lived in Lakewood, Ohio, about a mile from Lake Erie, for more than twenty-five years. She has recently been more serious about writing poetry after decades away and owes a great debt to many kind and generous writers in the Cleveland area. Her work is forthcoming in Pudding Magazine.