After the Scourging

(Christ after the Flagellation (c. 1665) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo - found here)

He crawls like a man toward water in the desert,

back to the mocking robe, dropped at the feet

of two attendant, worried-looking angels

who are under orders not to intervene.

Will he become more godlike in the robe

or less a disfigured god and more a man?

“If I can only get this put back on . . .”

could be the meaning in his blackened eyes,

the determination bleeding from his fingers

as they claw the rumpled cloth into his grip:

“If I can put this on, I will stand up.”

After Murillo

~Mark Jarman