The weeping woman who knelt at the feet 
of Jesus and anointed him for burial 
is sister to the lithe Abishag; the maid
 
who cradled the hoary head of David 
and warmed his paper skin with her own. 
Her tears remind one of Bathsheba’s, 

wept over a husband, murdered 
by a lover-king. The salt from those tears 
brings to mind Lot’s nameless wife
  
who found herself drowned in a Tsunami 
of fear and regret. There is an essential 
economy in the scriptures. Nothing
 
is ever wasted.  Like water and salt,
everything is repurposed, recycled, 
reborn. Figs from Naboth’s stolen
 
vineyard fill the borrowed dish 
Jesus shared with Judas in an upper 
room while the bones of Joseph can be found
 
littering Ezekiel’s dreams. Even the swords 
that Herod’s men drew against the babes 
of Palestine were forged, one by one,
 
in the granite heart of Egypt’s Pharaoh. 
And look, the pair of doves 
Noah released with such hope have flown
 
and flown until they have found their rest 
in Jerusalem in the leathered hands 
of Joseph, Jesus being but eight days old.