Rendezvous

Haiku for an uprising

The unbroken colt

is brought, as per instructions.

Jesus mounts and rides.

Garments line the road.

The company of his friends

sing and shout praises.

The expectation

is great: The revolution

must be upon us!

Concerned for order,

Pharisees command silence.

The stones will cry out!

Weeps for the city.

Were you paying attention

you might have known peace!

Reaching the temple,

the traders are driven out.

God’s house is restored.

Not the uprising

some had hoped for. This conquest

will be won by love.

© Ken Rookes 2022

Hail, Son of David!

Haiku for a grand entrance.

Jesus, the failed king

entering Jerusalem

riding a donkey.

The crowd goes crazy

greeting their king. Days later

they will turn on him.

Yet his words brought hope,

the promise of God's friendship.

Memories are short.

Hail, Son of David!

riding on your borrowed colt,

in your borrowed time.

© Ken Rookes 2017

Donkeys

Donkeys

In Willowra

languorous donkeys make their way

along the paved roads and unsealed streets,

chomping on their grassy tucker.

They move at an easy pace.

Sometimes they stroll across invisible boundaries,

disturbing packs of proprietorial dogs

These rouse themselves from shaded slumber,

to dustily defend their family’s territory

by chasing the offending beasts away.

The two-legged inhabitants of this community,

unlike their canine companions,

mostly leave the donkeys alone.

Like all of their kind,

the donkeys of Willowra

prefer a quiet life.

In Bethpage, near Jerusalem,

the colt of a donkey was, for a time,

wrenched from its stillness

and prevailed upon to carry a man into the city.

The procession was noisy,

with flourished cloaks and branches

thrown excitedly upon the road

in front of the shy, equine creature;

all the way to the temple.

A few hours later it was all over.

The colt was dismissed

and allowed to return to his gentle ruminations.

For the man who rode him,

the ruckus had just begun.

© Ken Rookes 2015.

Triumph

Jesus didn’t procrastinate.

“May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,”

he murmured quietly to his friends

as he made his arrangements to take the city.

“We’ll use a colt, though;

don’t want them to get the wrong idea.”

Which wrong idea, Jesus?

There seems to be a rich array to choose from.

Which idea did the crowd get

as they stripped the trees of their lower branches

and cast their robes into the dust?

“I was there when he rode into town!”

they would later say to their friends,

forgetting to mention

that they were part of another crowd

later in the week.

What did they hope for;

were they expecting more miracles

from the radical rabbi?

And what did they get

for their glimpse at celebrity?

A man like themselves,

but one determined to follow

his divine parent’s strange path

of courageous defiance, reckless generosity,

and foolish love.

© Ken Rookes