Pilgrimage to Pieta

With grace and cheer, despite her need to stop
and rest, to catch her breath too frequently,
the widow Mary trod these rocky hills
and hard-pan valley roads from Nazareth.
Five days in searing sun, five nights she and
a dozen pilgrims shared their fellowship
and food and space, and yet she sat alone
within her weary heart.  In numbers safe
outside the city walls, the tent now set
to stay a while, they'd merge tomorrow with
the crowds of worshipers through temple gates
to pray, and later share their Seder meal.
Arising Passover before the sun,
she walked the slope in search of time and place.

When Mary found the garden where long years
ago she'd stood dismayed, the empty tomb
where her own murdered son was laid in pall,
where she had failed to recognize a soul
who asked, "Why seek you life among the dead?"
The sun now shown across Jerusalem.
The past weighed heavy on her heart. She sat
upon a rock and laid a flower down
with gentle hands among the weeds.  She stood
in silent grace and trod, deliberate,
the few remaining steps uphill past storm
and butter memories of violence,
of midnight dark at noon, of shaking earth,
a cross, and she was standing on the Skull.

On Golgotha she knelt, poured water from
a skein into her hand and splashed her face,
gave thanks and drank.  She muttered his last words:
"El'i, El'i, La'ma sa-bach-tha'ni?"
"My God, God why hast thou forsaken me?:
She stood, descended gradual brown slope,
pale green awakening before her feet,
and shuffled south.  Midday, at Bethlehem
she bought a dove and crouched in shadow at
a stable, looked back toward Jerusalem.
When she released the dove, her heart rose with
the bird.  A smile quivered quiet, spoke,
"Who is my Son?  My Son, my Lord.  Thy will,
not mine, be done," her Pieta resolved.

(c)pete freas          2008             

from Mary, Mary, Mary: 
Visions of Grace