Easter is Weeks Away

Easter is weeks away but Christmas is my nightmare.

I have long desired to testify against the holy weight of things,

to lay my worked on hands upon the altar

and whisper that it is lighter than it looks.

But I have testified to nothing.

The evidence dissolves in my mouth.

Proof abandons me in dim corridors

like a disgraced envoy,

like monkeys in a back room

tapping faithfully at their bright little machines.

The feasts arrive in their robes of weather.

They bow and withdraw.

No one keeps vigil

except the shopkeeper polishing his till

and the devout who kneel before a calendar

printed in red.

But the hot cross buns,

ah, they are another gospel.

They appear beside the Easter eggs

like rival messiahs sharing a shelf,

and I make no complaint.

I am not a difficult believer.

I have entered the order of the bun.

Two a day.

I have been faithful for one entire day

and already I feel the discipline

settling on my shoulders

like a modest shroud.

There are no revelations yet,

no troubling visions.

Sometimes a face emerges

from the flour and the glaze,

a human arrangement of sorrow and heat.

On the upper bun

there is a grimace, unmistakable,

angry perhaps,

or merely puzzled

by what has become of His dominion.

The cross rests there

like a question He did not mean to ask.

A comedian once murmured

that God is out of His depth now,

and I think of Him

wading into the darkened bakery

after hours,

robes damp with doubt,

searching the cooling racks

for an explanation.

And somewhere in a mythical Yorkshire village

two rival bakeries sharpen their knives of pride.

The ovens glow like minor suns.

They will call the story Top Bun,

and it will be spoken of as a comedy,

though everyone will understand

it is about hunger,

and the small, sweet wars

we wage

in the name of bread.

Anonymous.