Poem: Sacrament
Sacrament
by Anne McCrady
Late January until early March…
like the toss and roll of a ship,
the weather comes in fits and lapses;
winter’s end and spring’s beginning.
These are the days of hold on,
of needing and wanting,
of waiting it out.
If there is an end-of-the-year,
this is it.
The intermission.
Nothing doing.
The Sabbath season.
A planner and grower,
he lived for these weeks.
Seed catalogues.
Garden sketches.
Fertilizer formulas.
Like a prophet
tuned to a private voice,
before the first retreat of cold,
he felt the spring coming,
and, with it, another chance
to please God.
Each year in March,
on one sunny afternoon,
it would be time.
A man embracing an old friend,
he would scrape away leftover vines
to stir the soil with his shovel,
then face the wind
and stand and cry.
Perhaps it was the smell
of under-earth turned over
by a spade just now remembering
the split of dig and throw,
or of fresh bark, still asleep and whole,
yearning for the nudge of new stems
and the weight of infant leaves.
Maybe it was just the feel
of his feet cradled in the dirt.
From inside the kitchen,
they would watch him,
their little faces lined up,
chins on the windowsill,
as he sobbed
until, exhausted, he fell
into the rocking rhythm of his shovel:
stab and twist and throw,
stab and twist and throw.
Turning, she would smile
knowing they have made it
to another year.
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