Apprehensions in the Garden of Gethsemane

The body had its thirty years
of pains and pleasures.
It warned Him what was coming
and of all that would be lost upon the hill.

The thumb, incarnate, knows
the moment of the misplaced hammer blow;
the tongue, incarnate, the cool invigoration
of water drawn from the dark well.

The body imagines the wounds,
imagines the absences of its demise.
It warns His serenity and purpose
of the lashes and the thorns,

the nails, the exhausted striving after breath,
the rasp and grimace of exasperated cries,
and the nerve-ends' dreadful silences
when all is finished.