poem/Easter, 2006

Easter

Tiny purple caps of tulips on my kitchen table

Sprout from bulbs thought too long dormant.

A winter’s worth of death defied,

By stalks that bend to life.

And here, on this beach,

There are hundreds of signs.

Descents and risings of a kind too often

ignored in favor of the more dramatic.

And mythical.

Birds that plummet into the deep of the sea.

Emerge victorious too.

A fish clutched in the beak,

and with it the promise of continued life.

Miraculous butterflies that flutter close

To the sand and then,

In a surprising but decisive move,

Soar to heights that must seem like heaven.

Sand crabs that burrow tirelessly into

little tombs that await.

It is frantic work, this act of burial.

If one waits long enough, they too

resurface to light.

Dolphins dive into waters unseen.

Sleek, fluid bodies break through

the surf once more.

And repeat the ballet like eternal spring.

And today, a little boy, buried to the neck

by a sister who relished the game perhaps

a bit too much.

He too arose from that would-be grave.

His ascension secured by a father

who does not abandon.

I need no story of tortured human flesh

that returns to life a god.

No Icarus, Phoenix, or Osiris,

To remind me.

For with every fall and determined ascent

Of bird, of butterfly or dolphin,

I too know a soaring of spirit;

A newness to life.

And join the endless dance

Of nature’s resurrection.

                                          Easter Sunday, 2006