Holy Saturday, 1998
David Wright
January 1, 2000
The skies should not be so bright nor the traffic of birds and cars
so quick, so sure of harmony and speed, so strong of voice and engine
that they sing and move without hesitation, without pause to hear
their thin notes and power doppler and mingle into a kind of suburban
praise chorus, the sort we used to sing in college, the words prismed
through an overhead projector and splayed across white cinder block walls,
distorted Bible verses held up as sacred by simple chords—C, F, G, G7, C—
what stood for variety, for clouds a single E or A minor on the bridge
to the happy ending. We resolved the notes behind our tightly shut eyes,
sometimes palms raised, sometimes arms draped across each other's shoulders.
After one time through, the guitar strummed us into an even swaying, all
moving together, incanting what passed for us as hymns, words bright, quick, sure,
and as happy with Jesus as we knew we deserved to be. We sang and rocked
a liturgy reckless as birds on an updraft, drivers on familiar roads,
the horizon ahead of us like a screen where we could shine or chant this simplest,
purest song, where approaching storms may have made deep silhouettes, and we,
with our eyes closed, would never see them, nor suspect.
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