He saw me first.

I saw a garden hand

With grass-pressed tunic,

Soil on toes,

Eyes at ease with a job well done.

He saw my tears yet didn’t flinch—

No garden hand had ever asked me

About that water swelling

In stormy cataracts on cheeks.

They’d taken my Love—He’s

Broken, stabbed, now stolen.

My love is gone, is gone, and

I would wail and run

Five thousand furlongs if only this garden man

Confides to me the hiding place that

Holds my love, my broken love.

He said my name, my truest word:

Mary, once bitter, now sweet.

He was a garden man, but

More—the one I’d lost. I knew

Him by that voice and by

Those eyes, new, knowing.

They caught the morning light and

Calmed my own frantic, swollen ones.

Where had He been? What ablutions

Rinsed crusted blood and water from olive skin and linen?

What had He seen and how did this morning’s Father

Turn toward yesterday’s forsaken Son?

What words had made my sad untrue?

Quiet mystery surrounded, hovered, haloed Him—this

Garden-loving, light-bearing frame of holed and holy clay.

He didn’t tell me where He’d been. (He never tells me everything.)

The rose-gold sky back-lit His frame.

My Love

Had found me first

Again.