We are now post-Easter in what, historically, has been called “Eastertide.” With our post-resurrection eyes we have the benefit of hindsight and a big picture view of Easter week events. I should really reflect more on that and probably will. Instead, I share a bit more about the Saturday before the Easter event. If we can remove ourselves from what we now know and envision ourselves among those first disciples, we can perhaps grasp a little better the dramatic change from a Saturday despair to a Sunday hope.

 

Be – in – tween

 

It seems an eternity for what promised eternity

to wrest itself from dark and dank and deathly cell.

Yet hours have passed, not days and still can’t be

how you would show us life before death you fell.

 

Everything we gave and more to stand as one

in your reverie of newness, in time of all that comes

to quell and quiver and quash the forces of un-done

that hate and hold and hammer our daughters, our sons.

 

Our group was tall, like trees or hills, a truth to share

to all who hear or have not strength nor shame to hold

the weight of wait for that or this, the just or fair

awakened now but still shadow, pledge, a story told.

 

Why leave us in such mean estate of doubt, despair and dark

when but a word, a touch, a look all pain suspends,

and move, retool, redact the tepid toil our sorry ways embark

instead to choose what not you chose but placed in others hands depends?

 

But now what cryptic hint of empty rock-èd tomb bestirs

this rumored gossip that comes to taunt and tease, we rue

with quivered tongue and knees that buckle unsure

if this should be a joke, another tale to ruse, all hope undo?

 

Silly girls, you babble, burst and blubber forth what cannot be

the news of, what, we cannot say, except impossible to hear

and still remain in dark and desperate impossibility?

No longer face we fear of ending but ending of our fear?

 

If this be what I think I see then torn am I from all my knowing,

abandon now my shrinking soul and bursting out with heated heart

I clutch and grasp my tightened breast, my parch-ed throat, now stowing

what vestiges remain of sadness and remorse depart.

 

My brothers here and sisters, too, once shattered dreams reborn

as mist of doubt and pain of loss and waves of night congealed.

To satisfy, not mystify, was your intent. You shed the scorn

of those of them and us who turned from shame, our love concealed.

 

Severed from the death before, now living, path and joy to bring

you settle down to chat and dine and titillate with presence rare.

All that was then is not what now seems true or right to sing,

Still, in our time be-darked, be – in – tween, you trade your joy for our despair.

An experimentation in the beautiful Japanese word-art otherwise known as, Haiku…

 

Here I sit, alone

Caged in public solitude

We are together

 

Never ending one

Sees what no one else can see

Subtle intrusion

 

Practicing sublime

Music, foraging in sounds

And every note counts

 

Dis-entangling

From places, wild, forbidden

Re-integrating

 

Come, save me, O God

Release me from my prison

That I might praise you

 

Severed like a limb

From life-giving tree and branch,

Awaiting our death

 

Felicitation

Birthing deeper happiness

Blest awakenings

 

Learning to reveal

What lies hidden and asleep

Reveals our learning

 

Now, with hearts, strangled

We wait, disembodied, blanched

Look, our tombstone rolls