A poetic reflection on Mark 14
Were you the one Christ found
shivering on the shore, the Legion
exorcised and sent to send pigs
over the cliff? Or maybe you
were the son who convulsed
for years, whose father advocated
on your behalf? Or the cripple
lowered into the musty synagogue,
willing to risk more injury
for a long shot chance of healing?
Either way, you were there
when they found Christ
in the garden, when they kissed
and bound him in the dark, and you,
hiding behind a tree, were spotted
in the lunar light, your linen shining
like moon dust. Healed days or months
before, you must have grabbed
the closest thing for clothing
so as not to be kept from
following the one who fixed
you—because when the
soldiers came to arrest you too,
they grabbed at the cloth
and you ran away bare and
unashamedly so.
Aaron Brown is a novelist and poet who lived for ten years in Chad, Africa. An MFA candidate at the University of Maryland, he is the author of the novella Bound (2012) and the poetry chapbook Winnower (2013), both published by Wipf & Stock. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Warscapes, The Curator, The Portland Review, Polaris, North Central Review, Windhover, Saint Katherine Review, and jmww, among others. You can read more about his work at www.writingtheinbetween.com. He lives with his wife in Lanham, Maryland.