Once so many generations, millennia, ago the
Angel of Death crossed the liminal divide and
how many died—first born of a whole nation.
Death visited; an appointment that might
have been avoided was kept. How many died?
Later, much later, no angel this time, but armed
soldiers bearing state sponsored writ, descended
across literal space, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
Death visited; fear driven massacre, killing how many?
One escaped, forewarned, until
now, lowered carefully, can we say despondently,
certainly sadly, by family and a few friends, he lays
across his mother’s lap as she once suckled
him, he lies beyond life. Somewhere. In a
borrowed tomb. Hastily wrapped and spiced—
conventions must be observed—the memory of
that earlier angel is still alive, and the rescue
he brought still worth remembering. Kairos:
all death joined in one death. Liminal space
created afresh and Passover now threshold,
no longer only memory,
thanks, this one time, to this one death.
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