Palm Sunday: after the parade

"Sunday" by Hannah Faith Notess

After the parade, the tired donkey

wanders back to her stall.

Among the bruised feathery branches,

a dog licks at a half-eaten snack

wrapped in a leaf, and the palms,

whose boughs are done being cut down,

begin again to whisper

their fragile green music.

Mud crusts and dries

on abandoned, trampled cloaks,

and the women carry some of them

down to the water for washing. He seemed

like a nice man, they tell each other.

He came from the country.

Across the city, the man

who had a strong face, a kind face,

is telling a story with his hands,

and in the lamplight

the wise and foolish virgins

cast shadows on the wall.

Tomorrow his hands will wither

a fig tree and overturn tables.

The temple veil will start

to stretch and fray. But on this street,

as night falls over the city, and the women

shoulder their dripping burdens

up the hill, the mutter of voices

at the well is only gossip,

and the wail rising in the air

is only a child's cry, hungry and thin.