“At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had been laid.” —John 19:41
From garden to garden, God’s body moved.
Born to breath beneath Eden’s tree,
He named Himself Adam, Herself Eve,
a twice-crowned exiled King and Queen.
Gethsemane came a dark surprise—
(Who knew where the garden gate might lead?)—
the wind in the olives, the moon’s slow rise,
the tell-tale blood on bony knees.
That gray Friday we carried Christ home
to one last garden, while evening birds
sang a song of pity His stopped ears heard
until He rose and hove away the stone.
Our good dead God, while the dawn birds keened,
bloomed anew in the garden’s sudden green.
From Saint Sinatra and Other Poems (WordTech, 2011). Used by permission of the author.
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell is a writer, poet, and professor at Fordham University in New York City, where she teaches English and creative writing and serves as associate director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. She is the author of eleven books of poems and four books of prose, three of which are about Flannery O’Connor, and her essays—about the poetic craft, the nexus between faith and art, and literature in the context of the Catholic intellectual tradition—appear in numerous publications, including the magazines America and Commonweal.
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