Easter Monday
an experiment in free verse
On Monday, the tomb was still empty.
Did the linens that swaddled His broken body
lie there, puddled, forgotten?
Were the jars of spices broken and
abandoned when the women who carried them
were found?
Did any wanderer by the empty tomb
trip over the discarded grave clothes,
pierce a foot on a shard of humble pot?
Did ordinary, workaday suffering touch
that beatified spot by Calvary, on the morning after?
Easter was bathed in radiant beams
from His holy face. Resurrected.
Then another day dawned.
The angels ascended, retreated,
left the disciples to marvel, to doubt,
to touch him, to weep,
because He was still alive.
In church, on a Sunday, the light bathes
each worshiper with the radiant beams
from His enduring grace.
Hands lift, voices rise, hallelujah!
Christ the Lord is risen today.
Back to work, on a Monday, the radiant beams
are clouded with cares and clocking-in,
the trumpet’s triumphal jubilee
put away for next year. Joy came
for a Sunday morning,
for a sunrise service,
for a rosy-cheeked baby marveling
over a chocolate egg.
But now?
“Only the sticky part is left.”1
On that first Sunday, when the women carrying spices
crept to the caves with the dawn,
they could not know that their early, dew-soaked shock
would be told and retold as the climax
of the story. They could not know that
as their week began, after the Sabbath,
as the toil renewed and the sorrow lingered,
the tomb would be empty, the joy indescribable,
a heart-arresting shock that changed everything,
and He would not go back.
For every year there is an Easter,
and a time for rejoicing under heaven,
and after every Easter there is a Monday,
and we pick up our crosses
and fold away the pastel dresses
and toss out the cracked plastic eggs
and fade the hallelujahs
but the tomb is still empty.
One day the Light will make
broken pot shards whole again,
make each of us new again,
discard shrouds forever,
do away with weariness and loss and heartbreak
forever,
because the tomb is still empty,
and He is coming back.
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yes that is a Winnie-the-Pooh quote. If it fits, I sits.
This captures the reality of Christ present with us in the everyday…..when the celebrations have faded and we put on our regular clothes. Thank you for the reminder.
Amy! Amy! This is so beautiful! Allusions to Silent Night, Winnie the Pooh, Ecclesiastes?! Who but you could do this? Every year there is at least one moment where the concept of eternal life just shocks me all over again. It's too good to be true! "Discard shrouds forever" encapsulates that perfectly. Thank you.
As an aside, a few years ago I learned there was a word for the women who brought spices to the tomb: myrrhophores (or myrrhbearers, but myrrhophore is cooler, and -phore is the same root as in Christopher, Christ-bearer). Not critiquing your word choice. I just wanted to share. :)