The Judas Tree

The shred of a dream clings in tatters from pieces

of a podcast I heard last night about St. Teresa of Avila*

who taught, Christ has no body but yours, and my eyes,

my feet, my hands are incorporated agents too. Is this what

is meant by the word visitation? Do borders dissolve?

I want to become this story. I want to have never heard it.

I want the day to begin with coffee and weather and light

out the window, to be lost in the moments and have that be all.

This morning my heart is swollen with ache, and the coffee,

The weather, beside the point. I want to turn back this day

In spite of the blue window light.

Is this annihilation or creation? I want to be rid of Christ

and his terrible wounds that work their way through my own

knotted chest. His life turned against itself for being itself.

He did only good. Too much to be borne in this world. He lifted

Judas Iscariot to an unbearable height who brought himself

back to earth in a redbud tree.

In its blue way the light out the window sees all this.

* Christ has no body but yours. Yours are the eyes with whichHe looks.

Yours are the feet with whichHe walks. Yours are the hands with which

He blesses the world.

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

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Judith Bowles is a Washington DC poet and have published two volumes of work: The Gatherer in 2014 and Unlocatable Source in 2019. Both books were published by WordTech Communications. She has been published in Gargoyle Magazine, Ekphrastic Review, Delmarva Review, Innisfree Journal of Poetry and Better Than Starbucks. In April of 2019, she was the poet in residence for the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA.