John is Dead

This cove shelters me, faint waves lapping against this boat like wet kisses, waves I created. I find solitude necessary, yet cold, as cold as your cell must have been.

I undulate, rocking with each wave like an infant nursing at its mother’s breast; with every wave there’s some remembrance of you. We first met; your mother looked ancient, and she was, who would’ve thought you’d come along when you did—I guess I did. I didn’t see you but you kicked hard, so hard my mother felt it three paces away.

I strain to distinguish the tears from sea water, should I touch my finger to my tongue I might tell. Not many have seen me cry; Martha, Mary, and a few. If there would have been another way I would have taken it, you knew that. If there’s another way for myself I long for it. Now a mist from the sky; perhaps heaven is crying too.

Herod, that fox; better a hound from hell, nursed his grudge against you from the depths of his pitiful soul; drinking from it like a drunkard with a wineskin full. You had exposed him when no one else dared to breathe a word for fear of the sword.

You were as different as I was; cut from the same cloth, different yet the same, sent by God. We played on Roman roads and white fields, we clambered to roof tops when we were eight; maybe you were already nine. We were great spies, great like we’d heard stories of in the synagogue, stories of Joshua and Caleb. Brown eyes danced with the movement of legions. Some people thought we never had fun, were never kids.

We skimmed stones on this same lake; the flat, smooth ones, smoothed by the same lapping waves, grinding against one another for centuries. Grinding in the same way my mind now grinds with anguish. I didn’t know it would end like this, I mean, I did, but I didn’t; you’d once said you were unworthy to tie my sandal–I miss you already.

My mother loved you, ever since that kick she treated you as though you were her own; she was just being mom. I wish I would have known you more; I mean in the sense that flesh and blood knows flesh and blood. We danced the Hora when your cousin got married, your father nearly tripped over us; hah…the bride and groom tottered but didn’t fall.

Herodias was the one who despised you, she thought you had a big yap and should’ve minded your own business. Repentance was your business!

I didn’t envy you, you were given a tough message to carry, but you carried it as though it was fire burning in your chest, only extinguished once the words had leapt from your lips. My brothers rolled their eyes at you the first time they saw you donned camel hair and a leather belt, they called you lunatic, freak, madman. I knew better.

Our escapade of catching grasshoppers at eleven is as alive as the moss growing on the rocks on the shore in front of me, green so deep it seems black.

I hope you were never alone, even in that cell, even when I might have done something but didn’t. You wanted news; was I the One? The lame walked, the deaf heard, the blind saw; putrid, stinking lepers grew new flesh. I was. I Am!

 She had left Philip–Herodias; divorced him, it was never meant to be that way, from the beginning the two became one flesh, we both knew it—even they knew it but chose to ignore it. Lust! And the fox too, divorced, so he could have her. You spoke loud my friend. Very loud!

Your belly ruptured with laughter when you’d heard my parents misplaced me at twelve; it took them two days before they realized I wasn’t with them. I suppose your mother would have worried too. She had passed by then though; I remember how sad you were that day. I couldn’t explain to you why you were so young and she was so old; I mean, I could but I couldn’t; didn’t!

We became men together, you first, then me. I started understanding more just about that time; more about me, why I was here. Joseph died shortly after, he was a good man; my hands calloused with his goodness. We shared our grief, but I share mine with no one now, here, grieving without you, for you. The horizon is blue but blurred.

Honey and wild locust, hmmm!

By the droves they came to the Jordan, to get clean. Pharisees saw it as ranting. Vipers. You know I called them that too. Repent! And the people came—I came. I remember the look on your face that day; you were as confused as a Jew at a pig roast. Why was I coming to you, you asked? It had to be that way, I was all-in, wrapped in the same kind of skin you were. I always model it—always!

You complied; you always did, ‘til the very end. I was hoping you would let me up; I’ve never mind walking on water, just wasn’t so comfortable buried in it. “Lamb of God,” you said, and heads turned. The Great White Dove descended, familiar; and the Sky spoke, “I’m pleased.” You faded, faded into the background, standing alone on the river’s edge like vertical driftwood. “You must increase,” you said, not knowing that to decrease meant to die.

That vulgar dance she danced pleased the lecherous lot; noblemen, generals, disturbed dinner guests; Herodias’ daughter tantalized. I wasn’t there, that feast for the eyes; she dangled like a ewe in front of a wolf pack as they snarled with pleasure and salivated.

Could not the one who opened eyes blind from birth, could not the one who stopped the mouths of demons liberate you? I could, but I couldn’t! It was some ageless plan, a distance beyond calculating, before the birth of stars and dragons and unicorns. So there you sat, now here I sit. Sad.

I preached in parables of weeds and mustard seeds and yeast, to the least. While there you sat, in some dank dungeon, waiting. And I worried when rejected in my own town, a Prophet without honor. Would you have traded me places? Would you now? The boat bobs, my mind drifts like a papyrus basket coated with pitch that once carried Moses.

Take your rest; well done good and faithful servant. From the first kick until your place on the platter.

The price of a dance was your head.