Maundy Thursday,
Plague Year

“and I am perpetually awaiting / a rebirth of wonder”
                           Lawrence Ferlinghetti

No Footwashing.
No solemn Eucharist.
No stripping of the altar.
No keeping watch
by the Blessed Sacrament.

These absences
are the stripping
of the heart’s altar,
smashing the idols
we have made
with our own hands
of how we worship.
Skip basin, towel,
even the Table.
Go directly
to Gethsemani’s
solitary, silent,
dark waiting
into seeming
responselessness
where, even now,
in stone-hard earth
one small stem
is shattering
its buried bulb.