In 2003 on Good Friday I wrote a song (simply titled "Good Friday") inspired by the events of Christ's Crucifixion and by the appropriate weather I noted on that day. Last year, in 2010, I wrote "Blue Sky Sunday", an Easter song that I finished on Good Friday; and, indeed, the following Easter Sunday of 2010 brought to us a beautiful blue sky---with just a wisp of white cloud, just like I had written in my song---it was a beautiful day.
This year I complete the "Triduum" with not a song, but a poem: "Holy Saturday". The absence of music seems appropriate for this part of the series. There is in Holy Saturday the idea of a suspense, a void, a silence that seems to call for a poem---simply words spoken about that unique day in history between atonement and triumph.
Holy Saturday
Fog hangs in the garden
On this grey Saturday
No light, no darkness
Only stone silence
And tepid suspense
Yesterday the earth shook
Rain soaked the quaking ground
Washed the blood over
Rocks, into rivulets
Seeking the low points
Yesterday the sky thundered
Tears flowed, mingling
With the fear in hearts
What has happened?
What has gone wrong?
Where is our hope?
Light, Love, Hope
Now lay in repose
Suspense
Death
The-Word-made-Flesh had succumbed to Death
But Death did not speak the final word…
---Gregory Eanes, April 2011
