The Service We Don't Hold on Easter

Lyrics

[Intro]


[Verse 1]
The vestry air is damp stone and old paper. April.
My breath is a small ghost before the dawn.
The liturgical calendar lies open on the oak desk,
a week of sorrows marked out in faded red ink.
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the glorious Sunday.
But Wednesday is blank. A deliberate desert.
The brass candlestick is cold, its wick is pale and stiff.
The quill lies dry beside the silver inkpot.
My black cassock hangs on its hook, a hollow man, a question.
No sermon is written. No lesson is prepared. The book stays closed.

[Chorus]
This is the service we do not hold.
This is the hymn that is not sung.
The prayer that is only the weight of the air.
The only liturgy for Spy Wednesday...
is a single black stone from the riverbed,
smooth and cold in the cup of my palm.

[Verse 2]
The heavy oak door groans on its iron hinges.
The graveyard is grey mist and sleeping names I know by heart.
I do not go to the pulpit. I do not approach the altar.
I walk only to the threshold.
And place the pebble on the top step, where all who pass might see.
A full stop at the end of a sentence
never spoken aloud.
A single piece of silver, paid in stone.
For the things a man cannot unsay, for the betrayal in the garden of the heart.

[Chorus]
This is the service we do not hold.
This is the hymn that is not sung.
The prayer that is only the weight of the air.
The only liturgy for Spy Wednesday...
is a single black stone on the cold doorstep,
witnessed only by the crow on the yew tree.

[Bridge]
The twins, I know, they see it from their attic window.
They watch the empty path. They see the closed door.
They see the small black dot I leave behind me on the stone.
They are good children.
They have learned the quiet grammar of grief.
They do not ask about the service that isn't.
And their not-asking is a quiet mercy,
a grace I have not earned.
A grace I do not deserve.

[Outro]
Back in the vestry.
The sun finds a crack in the plaster.
The dust motes dance in the thin, cold light.
The locked drawer in the desk holds the reasons. The letters. The date.
The pebble will sit there until Good Friday.
A quiet, heavy amen.
A silence that preaches louder than I ever could.