Now and Not Yet: Part II

Happy Easter, friends.

If you’ve read much of the blog at all, you know already that I like to write poetry as a way of observing different seasons in the church calendar. Poetry is, among other things, an exercise in spiritual meditation for me. That’s why my upcoming poetry book, Songs in the Gate: Poems from the Borderland of Now and Not Yet, contains three Advent cycles, a section of Holy Sonnets, and some individual poems for Epiphany, Lent, and Easter.

Hence, ’twas only natural that I wanted to mark this Easter with a poem. Having already written a sonnet for Holy Week (see last week’s post) I went into the weekend unsure of what form this year’s poetic Easter contemplation would take.

To my surprise, I found myself returning to the Holy Week sonnet, meditating on how the various services we attended on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday built upon my darker musings from only a few days before. What emerged is an answer to the Holy Week sonnet, much as my poem “The Dawn” is an answer to “The Dark Before Dawn”. (If you missed those two poems, which appear in the poetry book as “The Dawn Duet”, you can find their original posts here and here.)

I hope it encourages you as it did me.

May we all step into this Easter-tide with open hearts, ready hands, and lips filled only with the song of Love.

Easter 2018

Oh, do not let me leave you in the garden
Pour me as wine, and break my heart as bread
Now let me feel the blood-sweat on my head
Anointing my weak vows until they harden
Oh, do not let me leave you on the hill
Alone upon the symbol of my hate
As your surrender trains my mind to wait
I yield my selfish fear for you to kill
And do not let me leave you in the tomb
But bid my soul awake to the surprise
Of morning breaking through all spirit-eyes
Dispersing the decaying stone of gloom
Oh, Wonder! – loose your song upon my tongue
Till Love alone can from my heart be sung