A New Day–Easter Morning

Morning breaks
birdsong sounds
on a world of husks

The taste of death
and frailty lingers

And the weight of mourning
the caverns of broken hearts 
emerge from fitful sleep
still there
still here

A woman, tired
from the ocean of tears
of goodbye
and the cruelty
of what unfolded
finds solace in duty’s clarity

and mechanically dresses herself
for tending to
tomb
and harsh reality.

She approaches
and finds the stab
of insult to injury

The stone rolled back,
the body gone.

Someone took him
her mind sifts through
bitter scenarios
and the cruel script
that she has witnessed—
lies, whips, shouting, nails,
wails
and then reverberating
nothing.

The wash of tears
wells up and
flows
freely

Why? How?

“Woman, why are you weeping?”
interrupts her
clouded vision
grief stricken

“Tell me where you have taken him.  I will tend to him.”

“Mary.”

Chrysalis gives way
to bright wing
a bud unfolds to
warm its way into
possibility
birth waters create currents
of startling new life

She moved toward the voice she knew
the voice she had longed to hear
again
her reflex
an embrace, contact,
touch.

“Don’t hold onto me.”
She hears the miracle
of this moment

No more questions
Just
A joy
all new
and enough to turn
mourning
into dancing, racing, running

Go and tell, go and tell, go and tell
His words propel her
into a day
different than any other

When the horizon shifted
And the veil lifted
And time spilled
Into infinite possibility

And her duty evaporates
into elated announcement:
“He Is Risen!”
He is risen, indeed.