EASTER, 2023

 

EASTER, 2023

Mom’s birthday, born 99 years ago this day,

and I open to Luke before waking Karen.

The two men in white

asking the women,

Why do you look for the living

among the dead—ropas

resplandecientes, ¿Por qué

buscan ustedes entre los muertos

al que vive?

Bob’s making rolls,

and later in the day one granddaughter

will say at table, Grandpa,

We’re built differently than you guys.

Family is coming, and Karen,

bell ringer in a bell choir,

will ring the bells

that still can ring.

Despair is a sin,

Elizabeth Kolbert says.

Literalism is for the weak, Jon Meacham says,

and fundamentalism is for the insecure.

Light rain. 45 degrees. I didn’t put all of the garden tools away

last night, and now, they’ll rust.

Luke lays out repentance and forgiveness of sins,

and in John’s Gospel, John 20:17,

Jesus says, Do not hold on to me--

Suéltame—No me toques--

        Don’t touch me.

All that work, all this work, of resurrection.

Walking the garden I say to myself,

Resurrection is hard work.

            I’m better at death.

Confronted with the Cosmic Road, what does one say?

There is no empty sky with James Webb.

Dark matter and dark energy makes up 95% of our universe.

Very real, the two of them talking grief.

On 60 Minutes? No, on the podcast!

If that’s what you're going to do,

get something out of it.

The rabbi not so old knowing he looks like his father.

The reminder-prod, truth-duality, artist-truth-walk venture--

Yes, venture, it applies.

As an app?

Good tension, good wife, good day, good god—not good god, good dog!

How I listen while transplanting trees,

the slender, young, Hinoki Cypresses, aging before my eyes.

The need for this practice, continual, like breathing.

Blessings to you and Jane--Oh, Kate Bowles' blessings at her sign-off,

fresh and beautiful.

Bart’s directing Bell Choir this Easter morning.
What a gift for me, this man who delivers
Happy Easter Music on the backbeat.

He brings the dark matter with him.
I’ve got a Tao te Ching for you that will change your DNA
Jesús says, Don’t hold on to me. You don’t say.

We’re built differently, grandpa.
Richard Rohr, he’s sick again. Light candles.

He carries it? He carries it with him?

Happy Easter to you, can we take pictures in the pews?
He brings it with him.

The garden,

Another word for it is paradise,

Is open. I sang

In your Easter bonnet

To granddaughters this week

It was a dark dark week too,

Bart is directing two choirs 

And a trio of trumpets

And he’s in heaven.

And you’re the girl I’m taking

to the Easter Parade!

Karen wants nothing to do

with hats. I gave up trying to buy Easter hats

for women after so many rejections, 

Why I tune into Rex’s sisters in Little Rock every Sunday.

Before cutting the ham we have an Easter Egg Hunt.

I picked up a couple of bags of plastic eggs at the Dollar Store.

First I planted Dum Dums making a circle of suckers

around the bonsaid pine in the ground--

a kind of ceremonial pagan May Day dance.

Jelly beans, mini Tootsie Rolls,

wrapped Hershey’s in the plastic eggs

It all gathers humming in the egg

the poet says, My sweet Lord,

My sweet Lord—I had typed

couplets from the Tao of Haven Treviño--

How do you know you’re on your way

when your map no longer serves you--

like that, and placed them in the eggs,

giving instructions to the teen-age cousins

They sat in garden chairs

out back

and read them

to each other

eating candy

before we sat down to eat.

It was noon, on Easter.

There were rocks in the eggs

and a children’s sermon

and tiny crosses

and one with nothing

and children! Nothing

of scrounging wild dogs

the cave full

with emptiness.

There were children.

I took the cousins

two teenage girls

into the rock garden

Sammie had cleaned

every rock, bringing those

already buried

along with ones

still burrowing,

to the surface.

Jim Bodeen

Semana Santa/10 April 2023