The Life Oozed

The Life Oozed

(“Then Jesus shouted, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” John 11:43)

For ten minutes the life oozed between the molecules
of a well-ripened apple. Tasting like honey and
summer hay,
headaches (always invisible), ceased their
unwelcome battering upon my door.

(Do you know the sort of caller,
usually a friend, who climbs your front porch
and pounds the door like a boxer working the bag?
“I needed to ask you a question,” as if I was in the
back quarters of a mansion giving last minute instructions
to the servants about the banquet’s menu later in the day.
Then you watch them drive away, wishing they had known
you were in the front room of your bungalow with the
television turned low.)

For ten minutes life tasted like rain and thunder,
dog’s breath and wonder, all ready to go to waste
unless enjoyed before the bruises on the apple
remind you of the cycle
of the seed’s death and the fruit’s life,
of the fruit’s death and the seed’s burial,
inedible until the season circles again.

For half a week the tomb gobbled God’s own
possession,
dead and stiff, wrapped tighter than a cocoon,
a cadaver too soon. Yet, just like the
tiny pellets the size of hatpins, packed full
of all the life necessary to raise a tree to the sky,
lading its branches with fruit dangling so low
the children reach the sweet orbs of joy,
and springing new buds for decade upon
decade; like that tiny inkling, an ugly
kernel that seems a harlequin of death;

The body of Lazarus waits on the word
that calls life from the haphazard meeting of
husks and grain, mud and water, sunshine and
wind to paint the fields with wildflowers
and fruit trees without the help of a single
human finger.

The body of Lazarus, the body of us all,
depends upon the shout, the call to rise,
and rise it must

For it is the Creator who calls.