Holy Week, Acadiana
       

One whole holy week no air moved in town.

The ladies brought their boys to kneel
and fan them. We lit votives for the four men
lost out on a deep sea rig
and watched the flames inside the airless chapel,
still as stained-glass saints. They wavered only

when the congregation stood or kneeled,
when we sang in unison
the gospel's final hallelujah. Hard to know,

that long hot week of noon mass, the hours
at the stations and the passion, how to pray.

The oilmen brought back three bodies
and the lost man's wife swore
he was out there somewhere breathing, still.

So if you wished the lost man risen,
where was he? And what would he have seen?

As in storm season: if you prayed for mercy
or wished away a strong storm's landfall,
weren't you also wishing harm
on someone else's town?
One rule was:
you couldn't wish away the sorrow
the Lord saw fit to grant you

because even sorrow was firm proof of His hand.
I folded my head against my folded knuckles and whispered
the only sure safe words I knew:
please, Lord. Please.

All at once the air became
a fist. Then it was a palm.
It slapped me down.

And when I rose I was wailing
and speaking. The Lord a light
inside my ribcage. My tongue
a tongue of fire. At the wrong season.
The women called
for cool damp cloths. The priest was wearing
the wrong shade robe for prophecy.
The men quieted and carried me

out the wide church doors, lifting
by the ankles and the shoulders.
They laid me out.

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Copyright © 2018 Nancy Reddy All rights reserved
from Acadiana
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission