After the Signing of This Sunday's Scripture
David Wright
October 1, 2001
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now abide in my love."
—John 15:9
The words he forms with his fingers are foreign, to me at least. But they are still Scripture, holy
as any words can be. Little intricate gestures and curls of forefinger and thumb,
or broad symbols it takes his whole face and shoulder to make, before his hands come to
rest at his chest. Somewhere in the flailing, purposeful signs is God.
We sing abide with me, inviting the great gardener, the vintner who prunes back our branching
brothers, sisters, selves.
Which is the figure? Which the shadow flickering and fired on cave walls?
The vineyard, gardener, and sharp lover's blade?
Or the long, unfamiliar desire to remain at eventide,
to need presence every hour, every single hour?
Ills weigh, not like grapes that hang full in flavor and wait to gush,
but heavy, tears with their own bitterness, not like anything, not as anything,
not vinegar or bile—just bitter, their own full and hateful flavor.
Remain, abide, prune, grow. They all figure, the figures of speech, today the fingers of speech,
the signs of language, arcing arms and nimble digits, shaped by the helpless, helpless
hands that ride the air in ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
He looks to be reaching for what might fill his hands, what figures he might magically grasp,
but out here both language and silence drip through our cupped palms,
through our tight ringers like rain through veined garden leaves,
dropping round and hushed into summer dust.
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