I came to you at night
quiet fingers knocking on wooden shutters
lamp-light beckoning an invitation
a golden glow on olive skin
you took my words of opening
and swept them out of sight by your response
wafting away pleasantries
pinning my heart with your perceptive words
you spoke of birth and life and flesh
and as I sat silent
my spirit danced with possibility
synchronised with you
I spoke no words of how I’d changed
wrestling with a deeper love
I would have saved you
yet I kissed you with a worse betrayal
than that of your hell-bound confidante
I came to you once again
bearing perfumed gifts
not this time, from a king
nor from a woman with tears in her hair
but this exuberant embalmers robe
of myrrh and aloes
rich and sweet
I placed over your shoulders
as your would-be could-be never-to-be-spoken-of love.
© Lou Davis 2015
Last year, my friend Sarah and I took a rainy day trip to Glasgow to think about pharisees with Padraig O’Tuama. I was particularly taken with the character of Nicodemus, and on the three small tales we have of him; one visiting Jesus at night for a private encounter, one not quite managing to stick up for Jesus in the face of peer pressure and finally buying an overwhelming amount of herbs to embalm him in death. I let my artistic licence run loose a little and wrote it up as a doomed love story.