BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES

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They cut the palms too early~  
green blades still clinging to their spines,  
green fronds from tangled trees~
torn into fragments of hosanna.

They sang, Hosanna~  
Save us now—as if salvation  
were a thing that could be shouted down  
from heaven like ripe figs.  

Jesus rode a donkey’s jolting hips,  
its ribs a ladder of surrender,  
while feet—calloused, eager~  
stamped the fronds into the earth.  

The road to Jerusalem was never straight.  
It coiled like a question mark  
around the throat of the city,   
where cloaks became carpets  
and hosannas hung like laundry.

Did they see it then~  
how the palms would wither,  
how the shouts would harden  
into nails? The donkey walked  
as donkeys do: slow, sure,  
carrying what it could not name.  

And the man? He wept  
for the city that stones its prophets  
and feeds its children to the clockwork  
of empire. The palms waved,  
but the wind wrote something else  
in the dust between his toes.  

Blessed is he who comes~  
not with a sword, but with a tremor,  
not with a crown, but with the unkempt  
grace of a weed breaking the temple floor.

easterjesusfree verse

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