Gethsemane by Philip Butron – 3rd Prize 2020

In lockdown, my aunt has been busy with her craft work.

Hay can be as soft as the back seat of a Rover,

she confides, showing the paperclip crib

in a matchbox stable, a trio of thimble kings

with gifts of rolled gold – a bracelet charm –

joss in a toothpaste top, a bead of Nivea.

In the window, smaller still, fields of stars.

Her kitchen aquarium harbours a boat –

from a packet of cereal – catching foil fish

in a fishnet sock, and rough pipe-cleaner

men looking brown, whippy and strong.

These are the followers you’d want and need,

she says, to round up a congregation.

She staggers the Via Dolorosa one way

both ways down The Fulham Palace Road

paper bags of foodstuff heavy as plane trees.

Recently she fell. Breaking lockdown rules

two youths raised her up. One wiped her face.

One carried her bags. Veronica and Simon.

It’s good to pray for two at once, she says,

a marriage meant by heaven. And it feels

like a supermarket special offer. Bless them.

She goes to her window-box Gethsemane

with a jar of quartzite gravel –  tiny gem prayers

to say and drop and lay a further fleck of lane

that winds through mustard, cress and yucca,

to a matchstick Jesus on a choc stick cross.