The Seventh Day – Genesis 2:1-4

Posted by Tyler Kirkpatrick | July 5, 2020

I was recently inspired to write a poem for each day of creation–(which are written as poems themselves). I will be posting a new entry each day. Today: Genesis 2:1-4.

The Seventh Day

The ancient rabbis saw
that it was the seventh day
in which creation was completed.
Not a bonus day, not a day of recuperation
in order to make the Six Days' work
possible or more efficient. 
No.
The telos of Creation, towards which
the six days are always moving.

Tasks and to-do lists lie
in their places untouched
Statuses and identities of the
workday world are unimportant
and forgotten;
all are at rest in the "palace in time,"
impregnable walls fortified against
the onslaught and tyranny of things
the six-day conquest of space.

Turbines and trucks and tractors 
power down
Blue glow of unread emails and Reddit's rabbit trails
and Instagram's filtered reality and Facebook's fury
now a dull black.

The sudden Interruption of noise
gives rise to what first appears
as eerie silence but is not silence.
The sounds of the Seventh Day 
now no longer unnoticed:
conversation unhurried
laughter unfettered
suppers savored and unrushed
Doves cooing in aspens rattling 
their leaves in gentle wind
Spirit songs and people's prayers
Stop.
Cease.
Sabbath.
The Seventh Day.

[1] “Pilgrim bound by staff and faith, rest thy bones”, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54922 [retrieved July 5, 2020]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wooden_pilgrim_-_geograph.org.uk_-_778390.jpg