Birthnight

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Study for Nicodemus Visiting Jesus (c.1899)

Nicodemus, the Pharisee who appears at three critical moments in the Gospel of John, has always fascinated me as a character. For me he represents the willingness to remain curious, to allow one's understanding and heart to be expanded beyond what we assume or expect. I wrote the following poem after spending time meditating on Nicodemus' first appearance in the Fourth Gospel, his nighttime conversation with Jesus (John 3:1-21). It seems that Nicodemus gets far more than he bargained for in the encounter and I imagine him spending sleepless hours contemplating what he has yet to fully comprehend. I think of it as Nicodemus' birthnight.

Birthnight: A Song of Nicodemus

 

I don't know what compelled me

to seek you this night.

You were not hard to find,

but once found you were

hard to apprehend. Words

bent strangely in the darkness

turning corners I did not expect.

You must be born of

water

wind

spirit.

I saw mother and father, felt the warm

swell of blood into skin that comes

when pleasure joins pain. And after so long

felt again the rising tingle on my scalp

that faithful signal of discovery.

But what have I found here?

More has been unsaid than spoken

my answers taken and mysteries given.

You send me out riven and raw

uncertain which path to follow.

I only know that I cannot return home

to heaps of scrolls and words upon words

so I wander dark streets

past Herod's temple to the

tombs of Kidron where I sit down

and watch for the morning.

Eric Massanari

First published in Desert Call, Spring 2016